#hour13

           When I first arrived in Without, I was colored. When I first opened my eyes on this world, I was chestnut skin with scarlet and cerulean vestments in a world of white.

           I first assumed this world was a dream... then a nightmare... then purgatory and as the days ticked by... Hell.

           I began to explore the town - back when I still called it that - its nooks and recesses, its immaculate buildings and curving pathways, I tapped on every blank tombstone of the cemetery, inspected every tile of the church’s floor, pulled on every brick of the Park's pathways.

           I don't know what I was searching for… At first a secret passage that would lead to a world of color… But as time passed my thoughts of escape faded, and my dreams and skin shifted from color to shades of white.  It was then that I began to search for a sign of a creator. An imperfection in the stone, a mislaid brick- any sign that a human hand had wrought this place, any sign that a human heart might return...

*

           I step away from the wall and stare at the blemish feeling a strange kinship. We both are nothing but flaws.

           I turn and circle the park facing outward at the white buildings. Eggshell, Ivory, Moonstone, and Alabaster. I repeat the colors in my head. If I knew more names, would I see more colors? If i had a few more labels, would I see a richer tapestry of shades before me? I wonder what would happen if I forgot these names that I do know. Would I see the world at all? Would it be one endless expanse of white?

*

           I may have been half-mad the day that the lights danced in the sky.

           Coruscating orbs of light pulsed in the gray sky and hovered over the arena - my name for the sandy pit not far from the park.

           I could tell in an instant that something was coming, something that would arrive and free me from this purgatory. I stared at the almost blinding light in the arena's center, expecting the arrival of an angel.

           When the lights finally faded, I could see it was not an angel, but another person.  Even so, I wept with joy.

           Her name was Sarah.

*

           There is no geometry in Without. If I walk far enough in one direction, I find myself back where I started, my footsteps already faded. Some days I do nothing but run through the landscape, turning right and left randomly, hoping to find something new. I run until my lungs burn, I run until I fall unconscious, and yet, no matter how fast I run, I end up in the same place.

           Is Without just a small planet? Do I circumnavigate every time I walk a mile without turning?  Or is it impossibly large, with the same buildings replicated endlessly?  There is no way to tell.  No way of knowing how many churches or parks or arenas there are beneath the endless grey sky.  

*

           Sarah may have been human, but she was every bit the angel that I had hoped for. Together we walked the streets of Without, my chalk-white hand wrapped in her mahogany-brown one. She stared at this place with wonderment, and looking at the world through her eyes, I began to view this place as other than hell.

At night we leaned against each other by the pale fires we ignited in the arena's center. And when our lips touched and she threw her purple brassiere onto the alabaster ground, I began to suspect that this place might be a kind of heaven.

*

           Over time, my eyes have become accustomed to noticing the smallest changes in the grey sky.  Looking up, I can already see the lights gathering over the arena, beginning their dance.  I kneel down on the brick path at the park’s edge, tapping the individual stones out of habit. None of them are loose, my fingernails will have to do.

*

           I do not know how long it took for the wonderment in Sarah's eyes to fade. For her to gaze upon the white structures as prison bars and not vistas. For her to see the grey skies as dismal and not enchanting.

           Every time I looked at her lightening face my heart broke a little more. And each day, I asked her if there was anything I could do to ease her mind.  At first she insisted that nothing was wrong. And then she insisted there was nothing I could do. Until finally, she told me the truth.... There is a path that leads out of every prison…

*

           My nails are cracked and my fingers ache by the time I lift the brick from the charcoal dirt and ivory mortar.

           I clench my hands around the stone and glance upwards.  The light above the arena are pulsing with even more intensity, and I begin to walk towards them.  It is day 108. It will be happening soon.

*

           I tried to talk Sarah out of it, but her mind was made up. Without was not our home, but our prison. And if I tried to stop her then I was not her lover, but her warden. Her skin was already the color of parchment, she did not wish to wait until it matched mine.

           She found a path that led her up onto the steep tiled roof of the church.  She would go up there daily and stare at the ground below with a look of longing that nothing I was able to could make her feel.

           At night, with her arms wrapped around me, she assured me that this would be for the best.  We would be together forever. Together in a world of color.

*

           When I enter the arena, it feels as though I stand in the eye of a hurricane.  The lights circling above are now moving almost too quickly to see. They gradually lower to the ground, shooting off sparks of energy as they whiz back and forth.  I do not flinch or look away as they converge in front of me with an almost blinding flash of light. I simply step forward, the brick clenched in my hands.  

*

           Sarah and I clambered onto the roof, our hands – chalk-white and parchment - intertwined. Sarah grinned as she laid one last kiss on my lips.

           "A world of color," she whispered, as she leapt off the edge and dragged me with her towards the ground below.

*

           The lights subsided, and I saw the new arrival lying on the sand - her brown hair splayed out of the ground, her hands shaking and uncertain. She was colorful.  She was beautiful.

           I approached with the brick in my hands. She looked up at me, her heaving throat and shaking lips unable to form words… But they could form a scream as I brought the brick down onto her skull.  

           Her body went limp, as limp as Sarah’s hand in mine when we collided with the ground.

           And from her broken body oozed the same crimson hue.  

           I should be horrified-- revolted and what I had just done.  But all I could do was smile.  The red was so beautiful  

***

           I do not know why I survived the fall, when Sarah did not. Perhaps I had been here too long and was already a part of this place. Another fixture that would always recover, another thing that would be forever pristine.

           Perhaps if I had convinced Sarah to wait a little longer before our fall, she would have ended up like me... Chalk white and undying. Unable to kill herself no matter how many times she repeated the jump as I had, no matter how many times she slashed her wrists as I had...

           I am lonely, but I have no desire to experiment with the ones who arrive every 108 days. Some days I say it is because I never wish to feel the pain of loss again, never wish to make attachments.  Other days, I tell myself it is because I wish to condemn no one else to my fate, an eternity of eggshell and alabaster.

           It does not matter. The result is the same. I am a murderer.

           And I am alone.

           Perhaps someday I will go mad or perhaps I already am. Perhaps if Sarah and I had not leapt, these people would have arrived anyway. Perhaps this would have been our home – a town that would someday be full.  I have killed dozens already, I have no idea what would happen if I stopped.

           Is this my punishment for a crime long forgotten? Is this a test I have failed? There is no one to answer these questions in Without. There never will be.

I approached the keypad and reached out with my mind.  The room in front of me expanded in a kaleidoscopic array of dimensions and possibilities.  For a second – or an eternity, whatever, – my consciousness was in free fall,  but with a mental effort I anchored myself on now, and with a second effort I gave the timeline a little twist.

Then I knelt down in front of the keypad and put in a number:  00000000001.  A red warning light flashed, signalling I was incorrect.  I tapped in a second number: 00000000002

And the wall in front of me disappeared in an explosion of fire.

@

Then I knelt down in front of the keypad and put in a number:  00000000003.  A red warning light flashed, signalling I was incorrect.  I tapped in a second number: 00000000004

And the wall in front of me disappeared in an explosion of fire.

@

Then I knelt down in front of the keypad and put in a number:  142826578433.  A red warning light flashed, signalling I was incorrect.  I tapped in a second number: 142826578433

And the wall in front of me disappeared in an explosion of fire.

@

Then I knelt down in front of the keypad and put in a number:  753159456851.  A red warning light flashed, signalling I was incorrect.  I tapped in a second number: 753159456852

And the door in front of me slid open, revealing a small elevator on the other side, with a rather large bomb sitting in the center.

A hazy memory of that bomb blasting me to pieces crept into my mind.  All memories from the loops that hadn’t “happened” were dreamlike. In addition to being fuzzy on the details, I tended to remember only the interesting bits.  The only thing that was clear in my mind was that the next number in the sequence was 753159456853.  Keeping count is essential when crafting a loop for yourself, otherwise you’ll do the same thing in every iteration, something that I had far too much personal experience with.

I’d learned all these tips and tricks from a man named Felix. We met on the day  I created my first loop, which happened to be while I was doing some mountain climbing outside my hometown.  From my perspective, I fell 50-something feet and landed in the muscled arms of a red-haired man about three seconds later.  From the perspective of the rest of the world, I had been falling to my death and resetting for the last 200 years. 

The world had changed a lot in two centuries.  I’d entered the loop climbing up a 4,000 ft mountain, where the crisp air mingled with the lingering scent of a thousand rose bushes in the valley below.  The world I’d landed in was a pile of rubble with the air smelling of burnt plastic.  A light dusting of ash was falling from the red tinged sky.  As I started to hyperventilate, Felix tried to bring me up to speed.  

Felix’s name was Felix and he worked for an organization known as The Ravens.  The Ravens had found out about me accidentally creating a grisly loop of my own death in a national park and sent Felix to break me out. He was here to recruit me.  

I don’t remember too much after that; Felix says I was pretty much catatonic for the trip to Raven’s headquarters, a subterranean bomb shelter they affectionately named The Nest..  Felix brought me to an infirmary where a doctor checked me with a dozen different tools I didn’t recognize for a dozen different diseases I had never heard of.  Once they were satisfied I hadn’t brought any diseases with me they let me sleep. 

Felix showed up every day for the next couple weeks,  taking the time to explain what I’d missed.  The world I knew was gone;  roughly 250 years ago people had begun developing abilities that allowed them to control time.  Before long, six different militaries were vying to get every empowered human on the planet.  “The bombs falling wasn’t the worst part,”  Felix explained, as he puffed on a weird smokeless cigar, “”It was when they started messing with the timeline that things fell too shit.”   

Felix also explained that The Ravens were an organization dedicated to stabilizing the broken timeline.  He asked me if I wanted to be a part of that. 

I told him no.

He asked if I wanted to make a lot of money doing it.

I told him no

Then he asked if I wanted magic to learn how to use magic powers…

And, now, two short years later, here I was in an elevator ride standing next to a bomb that had exploded in my face a trillion times and also never. The Ravens had sent me here to steal a mechanical doodad developed in the late stages of the war called The Aion. 

The metal doors slid open and revealed what looked to be the interior of a mansion.  The entire room was covered in mahogany wood paneling and had honest-to-god suits of armor standing on either side of a massive staircase.  Artificial sunlight filtered in through fake windows high on the walls and I could see a very convincing illusion of cherry blossom branches on the other side of them.

A pang of nostalgia hit me.  It looked like something from a fancy medieval-themed ballroom in my time.  From home.  

I approached the staircase.  One of the suits of armor turned to face me,  because, of course, it was animatronic.  “HALT, IDENTIFY YOURSELF.” the synthesized voice said at the volume most people shout. 

“Sorry, what?”  I asked.  I’d heard him, but lying to people was a habit at this point.  

The sentry paused for a half second, “IDENTIFY YOURSELF OR BE ELIMINATED.”

“Oh, my name’s Finch,  like the bird,” I added, “ the extinct one.”

The robot paused to consider this, “THERE IS NO FINCH IN MY RECORDS. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED.”

I tilted my head to the side, “Are you sure? Can you check again?”

For a half-second the robot searched its database for me. @ For a half second the robot searched its database for me. @ For a half-second the robot searched its database for me.  I finished sealing the loop around the bot’s central processor and continued walking up the stairs.  Sometimes my job was too easy.

“THERE IS NO FINCH IN MY RECORDS,” the machine repeated behind me, “YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED.” I turned around to see the suit of armor stepping up the stairs and drawing a blade from the scabbard at its waist.  That wasn’t supposed to happen.  It had been a long time since I had botched a loop. 

I crouched into a fighting stance and gathered the delicate threads of time into my hands.  And then those threads dissipated as though someone had yanked them away.  SHIT.  This had only happened twice before, and it could mean only one thing:  That asshole was here.  

I gritted my teeth, one problem at a time.  The robot swung the medieval sword, and I scampered backwards up the stairs.  The robot was strong and well-armored, but it was bulky and slow.  I needed to create some space.  

As I reached the top of the stairs, I rolled backwards and drew the pistol I’d borrowed from the guard’s corpse.  I fired a few blasts of plasma at the center of the robot’s mass.  They sizzled harmlessly against the chest, the blue plasma cooling and dripping to the floor.  The robot plodded forward as if I hadn’t tried anything, a red light glowing from the eye slits in its helmet.

I searched the carpeted hallway at the top of the stairs for a weapon.  I found one waiting in the hands of another decorative suit of armor: a spiked mace.  I tipped over the statue to make sure it wouldn’t start swinging at me, and then grabbed the mace.  

I crouched against the wall as I weighed the weapon in my hands.  There were maybe six materials that could shrug off a direct hit from a plasma bolt.  Only two of those materials could convincingly pass as medieval armor and both were pretty brittle.  

I took a breath as the robot reached the top step and rolled out from behind cover.  The machine raised its sword for a strike, but before it could finish I brought my stolen mace down on its kneecap.  

The robot lurched to the side, trying to find its footing, and I took advantage of the weakness to smash my mace into the side of its head.  A spray of sparks and broken metal shot into the air as the machine tumbled to the ground.  

I smashed my mace into the back of its head one more time for good measure, and then checked the room to make sure that none of the other suits of armor had decided to make a move..  

Fortunately, they all seemed to be decorative. Unfortunately, clankers were the least of my problems at the moment.  Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel the stands of time being pulled taut in every direction.  It was something I’d only felt twice before, and I knew who was responsible:  The Phantom. 

The Phantom was the nickname The Ravens had given to a rival thief who had beaten us to our last few scores.  The Phantom was a time manipulator, like most of The Ravens,  but whoever they were, their skills were a level above anything I’d ever seen a raven do.  We had no idea who they worked for or anything else: Age, Gender, Race, no idea.  

I felt a ripple of energy at the far end of the hall and turned my head towards the source.  A figure in a dark grey bodysuit of molded armor stepped out from behind the corner. Their head was covered in a flat chrome reflective mask that reflected the room and me like a funhouse mirror.

I didn’t hesitate; I hurled the mace at the asshole’s skull, and then fired a trio of plasma blasts at their chest.  

Time lurched in the hallway. The mace and the blasts of plasma froze in the air. The Phantom casually walked towards me at speeds that looked superhuman.  Along the way, they plucked my mace out of the air as though they were picking an apple.   

“Sloppy.” A voice, distorted but hauntingly familiar, came out of the reflective helmet.  “You’ll need to do better.” No one in The Ravens had ever heard The Phantom speak before.  No one alive at any rate.  I tried not to think about what that meant for my chances. 

“You want better?” I asked, hoping I sounded confident.  I tightened my grip on the plasma pistol in my palm.The Phantom could dodge individual blasts, but what about… 

I yanked on the threads of time pulling myself just enough slack to create a small loop around myself.  I imagined the hallway as a 10 by 10 grid in front of me. Then I fired a shot at square 1. @ Then I fired a shot at square 2. @ … Then I fired a shot at square 98. @ Then I fired a shot at square 99. @ Then I fired a shot at square 100.  I grinned as a hundred bolts of plasma surged down the hallway.  Dodge this, asshole. 

I almost felt satisfied, almost.  Until the wall of plasma froze in midair.  

“Better.” The Phantom said from behind the wall of burning cerulean.  “But you’re not using your powers to their potential.  Let me show you.”  The plasma bolts all rocketed backwards to their point of origin, fizzling out where they had been created.  

Whatever The Phantom had planned I wasn’t going to stick around for it. I was already half way down the hall when I felt another lurch in time.  The flow of time twisted like a noose around my neck and squeezed.  As I struggled to breathe, the loop around my neck rapidly tightened as it increased in weight, yanking me onto the floor. 

This shouldn’t have been possible.  This was far beyond anything I’d seen any member of The Ravens do.  As I tried to use my talent to loosen the stands of time around my neck, The Phantom calmly stepped over to where I was on the floor. 

“Here,” The Phantom said, resting their hand against my throat.  They twisted time in a way that my brain could barely parse, and the garrote dissolved away.  “Do you see what I did there?” They asked,  “Time’s not all that different from space when you have powers like ours.”  

I grabbed the gun and pushed it against the temple of their mask, “Thanks, but I already have a mentor.” I pulled the trigger.  Or at least I tried to. The well-maintained plasma pistol was now a rusting relic with a jammed trigger and a dead battery. 

“Felix isn’t your mentor.” The Phantom replied as a glowing white sphere of hardened time hurtled through the air and rammed into my stomach knocking me to the ground, “He’s not your friend either.”   

I forced myself to my feet and into something of a combat stance, “Oh?” I asked, trying to hide my pain, “Got a lot of friends?”

“The Ravens are using you,”  The Phantom said as a dozen more orbs of hardened time materialized around the two of us, “And keeping things from you.”

“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,

“Actually, I do.”  The Phantom said, as they used a hand to lift off their metallic helmet and drop it to the floor   No… There was more gray in the hair, and more lines around the eyes, but it was unmistakably my face.   

“This is a trick…”

The Phantom locked eyes with me, “Felix showed me -- showed us – his true colors when we came to The Nest with powers that he had worked so hard to keep secret.  He nearly kills us.  And when he fails, the death squads he sends are even worse. Do you know why I survived?”  

“I don’t…”

“I survived because I had years and years and years of hard training.” My doppelganger said as they put their helmet back on, “Now shut up and fight.”  

Time surged through the hallway as The Phantom charged at me.  Dozens of hazy images flooded into my head of seeing this before.  I rolled out of the way of the attack and reached for the robot’s discarded broadsword. Before I could reach it another orb struck me in the jaw with enough force to send me skittering across the floor.

“We have a long way to go,” The Phantom said as the rusted plasma pistol flew off the floor into their outstretched hands.  By the time they grabbed the weapon it looked brand new.

“Why?” I asked, “Why do this to yourself?”

“Because we need to be strong.  It’s the only way to defeat The Ravens.” They paused, “But more importantly,  It’s the only way we see home again.”  

I looked up at the metal mask and saw my own distorted reflection.  Home. 

“Will it work?” I asked

“It already has,” I replied, “Better luck next time.” 

The Phantom pulled the trigger.  A flash of blue plasma streaked towards my chest and

@

“Hey, Stop!” The guard shouted, raising his gun and pointing it at my chest.