The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

“He doing his we are just like you, we only want to be loved routine?”

“Beats the there are dark forces rising against you, and we lost track of an angry white boy who could swallow Boston in one gulp routine,” says Fahima.

“It’s a bad idea. He’s painting a target on us.”

“He’s painting it on himself,” she says. “He’s making himself a target so he’ll know where they’re aiming.”

Patrick sighs. “I’ll be back tonight to get the gun.”

“If you find Owen Curry, will you use it?” Fahima asks. “Bring him back to his cozy little cell?”

“No,” says Patrick. His voice is casual, easy. “I’m going to kill him.”

—

With a showman’s flourish, Fahima opens the minifridge in the lab. Emmeline stares into it. An EEG helmet totters on her head like a colander, her dark curls peeking out from under its edge.

“You need more food,” Emmeline says.

Fahima doesn’t remember when their sessions became playful or developed a rapport that borders on shtick. They hadn’t started out that way. Emmeline was skittish and shy her first month at Bishop. Fahima took on special sessions only with students whose abilities presented threats to themselves or others. Carrie Norris, who Fahima worried might dissipate into nothing. Roberta Draper, whose natural body temperature hovered near zero Kelvin and who couldn’t share a room with another student, let alone be touched. Fahima had nightmares about Roberta’s first kiss as a replay of the flagpole scene from A Christmas Story. And Emmeline, who can do things in the Hive that Bishop says are impossible but has only hinted at a fully manifested ability so far.

“I don’t need more food,” Fahima says. “I already ate. Before you came in, there was leftover lo mein in this refrigerator, and I took it out and ate it.”

Emmeline nods. “You didn’t even heat it up, did you?”

“Do you know that, or are you guessing?” Fahima asks.

“I’m guessing because you are gross,” Emmeline says, grinning at her.

“Which you know,” says Fahima. She likes running these sessions as farcical versions of her sessions with Bishop years ago. Give me facts. Tell me what you know. Empiricism empiricism. That Fahima believes in the importance of these things doesn’t diminish the comedy.

“I ate a pint of cold lo mein,” she says. “And I am not ashamed to admit it. That’s not the point. The point is, the lo mein was in the fridge.”

“Okay,” says Emmeline.

“An hour ago,” Fahima says.

“Before you ate it.”

“Yes.”

“Got it,” Emmeline says.

Fahima pauses. What comes next is risky. Abilities can be daunting, especially when they come early. When Fahima first got a sense of what she was becoming, her mind ran screaming. She has to tread carefully if she doesn’t want to risk breaking Emmeline. But if Emmeline can’t accept and take control of her ability, there’s a risk she’ll break everything else.

“I want you to get the lo mein,” Fahima says.

“I don’t understand.”

Fahima shuts the fridge and hops up onto the counter next to Emmeline. “This is what I think,” she says. “If I had lo mein in the fridge right now, uneaten, and some other kid came in, I could tell them the lo mein is in the fridge and they could go get it.”

“So could I,” says Emmeline.

“They could walk across the room and open the fridge and get the lo mein.”

“Okay,” Emmeline says.

“And I think that I can say to you, ‘The lo mein was in the fridge an hour ago,’ and you can go get it, exactly the same way.”

Emmeline looks at Fahima. Fahima sees that spark of fear, the exact thing she was worried about. It’s unavoidable, but she needs to keep it small.

“You think I can time travel?” Emmeline says.

“I think you have,” Fahima says. “Or will have. The grammar around stuff like this is a mess. But yes, I think you can time travel. Remember what you told me about what you saw in the park? The tower?”

“My mom and dad saw it, too,” says Emmeline.

“Exactly,” Fahima says. “If you were the only one who saw it, I’d be working with the theory that you’re precognitive. But I think your parents saw it because they went with you. For a second.”

“To the future?”

“This is what I think,” Fahima says.

Emmeline scoots away from her. She looks at her shoes. “I can’t,” she says.

“Maybe you can,” says Fahima.

“I’ve tried.”

Fahima nods, adding this information to the mental file she keeps on Emmeline. They’re friends, but Emmeline is also a subject. If Fahima is right, the girl presents a risk not only to herself or the people around her but to the structure of the world.

“You tried to go back,” she says.

“Yes,” says Emmeline.

“Way back?”

“Yes.”

“You tried to fix your mom and dad,” says Fahima. “And it didn’t work.” Emmeline doesn’t answer. Fahima jumps up, goes to a dry erase board, and grabs a marker.

“Two possibilities,” she says, holding up two fingers. “Time—” She draws a line with arrows pointing in either direction. “—assuming it’s linear and simple, which is, in this case, an unsafe assumption, the unwed mother of a massive fuckup.” Emmeline giggles. Fahima draws a stick figure toward the right end of the line. “One,” she says. “You were trying to go too far.” She draws a huge arc from the stick figure to the left end of the line. “You’re new to this, and you tried to jump back a week or a month when maybe you could only go back a couple minutes.” She erases the arc. “Or two,” she says, drawing another arc, this one landing in the middle of the line. She circles where the arc and the line intersect. “You were trying to change something so big, changing it would change you.” Fahima creates another line, branching off from the intersection, headed down. A new timeline. A separate reality. “It would make it so you were never in the place you left from.” She erases all the initial lines from the point of intersection to