Within the Realm of Possibility
VICTOR
Libraries are supposed to be quiet places, but reading has never been a quiet experience for me.
I sit in a cushy chair by the back window overlooking a peaceful golf course, yet the cries of warriors and the whispers of spies ring loud, their fetid breath warm across my skin. The wind roars, trying to push me over. Rain streams through my hair and drips off my chin, cold and electric. Steel slashes, and I can taste it.
The page turns, new letters leaping to draw more details, but they freeze as my attention is ripped away by approaching footsteps.
They aren’t the normal tap-tap-tap. The left one lags, accompanied by the sound of mallets trilling on a xylophone, eight quick strikes each time the toes touch down.
I would know that tread anywhere.
“Victor, did you read that entire series while sitting there?” Jasper gestures at the seven books stacked on the table beside me.
“No, I have twenty pages left.”
“Just my luck, I’d get assigned a word nerd for a teammate,” he grumbles. Buried in his tone I hear a chorus of tubas, all almost out of breath. It matches his exaggerated shoulder slump, as if he’s given up.
“I’m just as fortunate to have a teammate who doesn’t know the meaning of the word stealth,” I return, and his pale, freckle-covered skin reddens.
My eyes swivel back to my book. I really want to find out what happens next, but the words don’t paint or sing when Jasper stares.
“Did you enjoy community service?”
His laugh sounds like a flatulent bassoon. “If anyone enjoys cleaning discs returned to the library, I’d like to meet them. Seriously, how does a DVD get covered in cake batter and cat pee? You shouldn’t have left me to get caught.”
I shrug. “Lapis said you were doing something stupid and I shouldn’t interfere.”
A memory surfaces, sharper than the present. Warm mist forms a blanket in font of my face, Jasper at my side as we hide behind a tangle of redwood roots. We’re supposed to recover the latest relic, but governmental authorities made it here first. Lapis calls it complicated.
“And you always do what Lapis says.” Jasper rolls his eyes.
I shrug again. “She’s never wrong. She told us to stay put in those roots.”
He plops down in the chair next to mine, calling a glare from the librarian at the desk twenty yards away. A smirk grows behind my book. Even if I’d have been the one to plop, her warning still likely would have sought out Jasper. Tall with fiery-colored hair and irises so green they seem to glow, Jasper draws the eye long before I do.
He grins at the librarian until she turns to help someone. She wouldn’t be so quick to look away if she could see the real us.
“One of those idiots was about to touch the relic, and you know how much some of those things don’t like to be touched.”
“You know how much Lapis prefers to be obeyed.” I start another shrug, then realize I’ve already done that twice, and if I keep it up, Jasper will accuse me of being a robot with limited, unimaginative programming.
So I purposely try not to shrug, but my right shoulder gets the memo a bit late. Now I look like a broken robot.
Maybe I should be as strict with my shoulders as Lapis is with us. She says obedience is absolute, that many times it’s the difference between life and death, but Jasper rarely remembers anything she says.
Has he learned that lesson since she let him get caught? Since she had him go through the system? He says his light sentence is because of his leg, but I know that was Lapis’ doing, too. She just wanted to keep him busy, bored, and out of the way while she cleaned up the mess.
Jasper still rants, a piccolo playing The Bumblebee. “Even if the relic wouldn’t have hurt them, we’re supposed to keep alien tech out of the hands of the populace. It always goes bad in the long run.”
I glance at the stack of books I just read. They weave a tale of AI taking over the world. So far the rebel leader’s actions have only brought more destruction, and I don’t really see how he can fix everything in the twenty pages he has left.
“Just look at them now with the measly tech they’ve come up with themselves,” Jasper goes on, “mindlessly staring at screens and walking into trees. They lose their sense of purpose, the satisfaction in doing real things.”
Arms crossed in an attempt to prevent any more shrugs, I ask, “Do you think it’s the tech that’s bad, or humanity?”
“Whoa, that’s a deep topic for before lunch. Where’s Lapis?”
I feel the shrug building but manage to clamp down on it this time. “She said to wait here.”
“Of course she did. You know what this place really needs? A jacuzzi.”
“That would only encourage people to get the books wet."
I stare at my page, rereading the first sentence again and again. Don’t listen to him; focus on the music of everything else.
Strings play a staccato hum. Something’s off. My eye’s flick to Jasper as he stiffens.
“You smell that?”
Probably not, but Jasper’s nose is never wrong.
***
ELSEWHERE
Like a baby taking its first breath, a flame hisses, vibrant, full of potential. It doesn’t know why it’s here, but it’s hungry.
It sashays on the end of a match, flickering as fingers let go. As it falls, it snaps at the air, fighting to exist, ready to devour.
She is its mother. She brought it into being, and she sends it out into the world. She smiles as the tiny, struggling flame finds the trail she prepared—powdered accelerant sprinkled from shelf to shelf, room to room, floor to floor. The fire will eat, and it will grow.
It will destroy. People will term it a monster, but not even that moniker can deny a mother’s love, especially if this child flame can accomplish her most cherished wish.
The fire will finally take her home.
***
To be continued...