Merges are…
…hard to explain.
After my first merge, my assigned therapist tried to help me make sense of things. He told me that worlds…realities…were like water balloons. But sometimes, the space between water balloons thinned. Or maybe it was the rubber. The balloon itself.
Look, he said this crap, not me.
When the thinning…thins…sometimes things come through. Realities merge. And the world changes. The two water balloons become one for a few seconds—or a few minutes. Then the thinning thickens, and a little…unreality, or other reality…gets trapped in ours. People barely notice the short ones.
But sometimes, there’s a pin through the balloons, and the thinnings get stuck.
Don’t ask why they don’t pop. He sucked at metaphors.
----------------------------------------
Outside Victoria, British Columbia - May 23, 2043, 11:47 AM
- - - - -
[Remain calm. Follow your optical augment’s path to the nearest shelter.]
[Avoid contact with anomalies and the unknown. Keep roads clear.]
[Obey instructions from emergency personnel.]
[Merge Window in :90]
[Merge Window in :89]
I have time to think in the second before the panic well and truly sets in. I’ve never seen a SHOCKS message before. I think my therapist worked for SHOCKS. The pills that Alice and Dad took might’ve had their logo. The triangle and circles with the arrows in them. But messages? Those are just for emergencies.
I don’t know what SHOCKS stands for, but the rumors fly whenever something weird happens. They’re either the last line of defense against the inexplicable, scientists trying to explain it, or some shadow agency trying to hide it from everyone else. Sometimes, they’re all three. But mostly, they’re a boogieman—a scary story and nothing more. Every kid at school has a SHOCKS story, but I’m the only one that’s met them. For a moment, the message on my optic aug scares me more than the impending merge.
Then, the moment passes, and I remember.
Will the maroon sun overpower clouds? Do I hear a buzz already? I can already taste the electric, metal tang that’s kept me using plastic forks and spoons for nine years. And when it’s over, will SHOCKS try to give me those pills again? My stomach tries to escape through my throat. I don’t want what’s happening. But there’s something else—a burning interest. Since it’s happening, I have to know the truth.
Another message flashes into my eyes, then vanishes before I can read more than the first two lines. It doesn’t read like a SHOCKS warning, though it uses my augs.
{Halcyon System Initializing}
{Initiating Anti-Interference Countermeasures. Time to brea—}
It cuts off before I can read the rest.
People move around me. Dad grabs my dress sleeve and drags me down the bleachers. I scream; he’s got a lock of my hair in his grip along with the dress sleeve, and my scalp burns, but he keeps pulling. A few people glance at us, but we both ignore them: Dad because he’s…Dad, and me because the pain recenters me. I’ve been hurt worse, of course, but as hair rips off the side of my head, it jolts me out of my thoughts and into now.
[Obey instructions from emergency personnel.]
[Follow your optical augment’s path to the nearest shelter.]
[Ignore Strange Emergency Messages]
[Merge Window in :07]
I brace myself for what I know is coming, even as Dad pulls. The roses and machine oil, and the white flash. But none of that happens.
[Merge In Progress. Find shelter immediately.]
[Report anomalous encounters when safe. Avoid contact when possible.]
[Follow your optical augment’s path to the nearest shelter.]
{Initiating Anti-Firewall Countermeasures. Time t—}
I pull my hair out of Dad’s grip, tears running down my face. “What’s happening? Where’s the light?” I whisper. Nothing’s changed. Everything’s exactly like it was.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dad half-shouts. We stand on the soccer field’s sideline. The sky seems normal for late May on Vancouver Island; the only smells are freshly cut grass, the ocean, and anxious sweat. I spit, and the electric metal taste leaves my mouth. I’d only imagined it.
“There’s supposed to be a red sun, Dad,” I whisper again, barely able to hear myself over the screaming, shouting crowd around us. But even as I say it, I remember. Dad doesn’t believe my first merge happened the way I know it did, either.
The screams and shouts fade as a voice echoes from the loudspeakers. It’s not Alice’s. “Attention, students, faculty, and guests. Please make your way to the main doors and, from there, to the shelter located next to the front office.”
We’ve run drills, of course. They’re better than the ones in elementary school—the ones where the plan was to hide in a closet or under your desk until someone came to rescue you. But ‘go to a shelter’ doesn’t do much for me. I’m more interested in why nothing’s changed.
But then I see it. Something has changed. A silver and multicolored glimmer shines through the gap between the bleachers. I’ve never seen it before, but I know what it is.
A thinning.
----------------------------------------
It’s there, in the middle of the Truth Club’s spot; our cigarette butts and candy wrappers form a perfectly circular ring around it, maybe two feet from its edges. My ears ring as I peer at its dancing rainbow through the bleachers—not the buzzing hum that filled my mind last time. And my teeth ache.
I know it should be growing. I know I should run. But I’ve never seen a thinning this closely before. Only what comes through them. But somewhere, some faceless scientist is watching this through a computer screen in ups and downs on a graph while I get to see it in person. And no amount of flashing warnings in my optic aug can stop me from seeing the Truth.
Dad can, though. His hand closes roughly on my shoulder. As he spins me around, the stale stink smashes into me like a hammer. Then the other smell cuts through that. It’s on his breath. “You brought that here? To our school?” I ask.
“No!” The bulge in his shirt pocket and the silver lid are honest. He’s a liar too. “We don’t have time. Stop staring at it and move!”
I whip my head back toward the thinning. It hasn’t grown at all. The shimmering kaleidoscope of colors dancing across it pulses like a heartbeat.
Dad grabs me again, this time by my wrist. He’s not a gentle man, and I squeak in pain for a moment before I bite it down. I want to fight. I want to argue. I want to scream at him about the flask in his pocket, and the stench rolling off him, and why he hasn’t had a job in four years, and why I come home to ramen noodles for dinner every day after school and why Alice gets new clothes but I get nothing but her hand-me-downs that don’t even fit right. But now’s not the time. Besides, he likes me more because I don’t ask those questions.
So, instead, I let him drag me into the crowd. Three thousand people, all trying to squeeze through a double door. It’s not organized. It’s not a line. No, it’s much, much worse than the cafeteria rush ever was, and Dad and I are stuck in the back.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
My ears keep ringing, growing louder and louder by the second. It drowns out all the shouting and screaming and fills my brain. I pull my hand free from Dad’s, and he lets me go. Why not? I’m safe now. Safe in line, with the merge just a few yards away.
I watch the merge—the thinning—out of the corner of my eye. It shimmers brightly under the bleachers, beckoning me closer. It’s even where the Truth Club meets, almost like it’s part of our little sisterhood, with Sora and me.
Sora. Shit.
Dad’s not watching me. He’s watching Alice—perfect Alice, standing on a metal table and trying to direct traffic in her graduation gown and valedictorian’s sash. She’s such a fake. Such a liar. And right now, she’s exactly the distraction I need.
I’m halfway across the field before Dad realizes I’m gone. The school’s Universal Reality Stabilizer is working. That’s the ringing and the dancing colors; it said so during our drills. It’ll keep me safe, so I don’t have anything to fear. But I have to find Sora.
And if we’re being honest, I need to know the truth. My therapist didn’t tell me the whole story—I was five, after all—and I want to learn more.
The thinning glows brighter and more vibrant as I squat-walk under the bleachers. I can almost see through the water balloons; I probably could if it weren’t for the Universal Reality Stabilizer. It’s funny, though. The truth that SHOCKS fights, studies, or tries to hide sits right here, under the bleachers, in the middle of the Truth Club’s meeting place.
My ears pop, and the whining, ringing sound doubles. Sora’s not here; she must’ve rejoined her family after I left. But something is moving in the water balloon.
The ringing stops. The kaleidoscope disappears. And in that moment, I realize how stupid I am. How fucked I am. But hey, at least I get to see the Truth before I die.
The thinning opens just an arm’s length from me—a towering gate into another world. The gate opens wider and wider, and the cool May afternoon grows frigid. Air rushes into the widening thinning and then, suddenly—
I blink.
—When my eyes open, we’ve merged. And it’s all wrong. I don’t recognize this world.
The sun seems pale, a white light like the fluorescents in the school’s hall. It struggles to break through the clouds, its rays barely brightening the space under the bleachers to twilight. More concerning are the clouds themselves—yellow-black, smoggy splotches of smoke that drift together, trade lightning bolts, and then drift apart. The URS couldn’t keep the merge closed, but it’s keeping a bit of…home…intact around the school and the soccer field.
That’s the good news.
The bad is that I’m not there. I’m here—under the bleachers, an arm’s length from the merge’s middle. And there’s something here with me. A—
{Halcyon System Initial Sync}
{Bypassing Firewalls}
{Firewall Protocols Overridden: 1/3}
{System Access: 15%}
{Thinling (-1) - Anomalous Entity}
{Stability 9/10}
—The words pop into my augs. I’ve never heard it before, but somehow, thinling feels right. Correct, even. I don’t have time to focus more on it, though. My entire head hurts just looking at the thing; it’s like an optic and aural aug migraine at the same time. My world has collapsed to just me, the bleachers, and the thinling.
Its bone-white skin/exoskeleton/armor glistens with a thin sheen of rain/blood/oil. Jaws/claws/saws open, and it slithers/slides/clatters across the ground toward me. The animal/monster/machine keeps changing every time I blink, but it hates me no matter what it looks like.
Whatever made the thinling created/evolved/designed it to kill. Fuck, it’s hard to think about it. Hard to see it.
It roars—My brain thinks it’s a monster, even though it looks like a robot right now—at me. And in that second, as an electric smell mixes with warm ground beef, I decide I don’t really want to know the Truth after all.
I backpedal, but the thinling moves quicker. The arm’s-length gap between it and me disappears as I churn my legs through syrup, and its jaw/claw/saw screams. The mud—or maybe an empty, abandoned bag of Lays chips—slides under my shoe, and I scream.
My scream cuts off with a yelp and a whooshing sound as my back hits the mud, driving every ounce of air from my lungs. I try to breathe, but I can’t fill my lungs. I can’t fill my lungs! They burn as I crab-crawl backward through the mud, wedging my body deeper under the ever-narrowing bleachers.
A small, inconsequential voice in my head reminds me that I’m dead anyway. Dad’s gonna kill me for getting mud on Mom’s dress.
The rest of my mind focuses on worming through the cold metal benches and onto the soccer field. The thinling hisses/roars/thunders beneath the metal bars, chewing/ripping/sawing at them, the steel and aluminum screeching in pain as sparks shower onto my baggy pants.
I try to scream. But I still can’t fill my lungs, so all that comes out is a half-assed cough. That’s enough, though, to get my lungs started.
I breathe. Pain rips through my chest as freezing-cold air hits my empty lungs, and this time, I do scream. But I also wriggle free of the bleachers and start running. Not toward the crowd staring at me like I’m the problem, but across the field toward the math and science wing. I need to run toward Dad. He’s a rock. He’ll keep me safe. But I’m running toward the windows instead.
Mr. Roberts, the PE teacher, has never said a single nice thing about me. I don’t do enough push-ups. I can’t finish the mile run without walking. I’m nothing like Alice. I’ve always ignored his bullshit, but today—right now—I wish I’d worked a little harder in his class. The bleachers whine and howl and collapse as the thinling tears itself free and steps onto the soccer field.
Now people start screaming and shouting. Now they see the thinling and the merge. The crowd turns to a frothing mass of people fighting to get inside.
I can’t change course now. The thinling is right behind me; I can already feel its jaws/claws/saws slicing into my back. There’s only one good option: Mrs. Helquist’s classroom window.
We’ve practiced window-breaking; every kid in British Columbia has. You put the rock into the top corner as hard as you can, then use a jacket to break away the glass stuck to the frame. Cover up what’s left with the same jacket and crawl through. That’s great, but it doesn’t help when you’ve got three seconds to break that window and get your ass through.
So, the decorative rock crashes through the window pane. I throw myself through the still-falling glass, screaming as it cuts me. And then I’m inside Mrs. Helquist’s room.
----------------------------------------
Mrs. Helquist hasn’t lied once this year. She says math only cares about the truth. I know she means capital-T-Truth, and that’s why I love her.
Her room looks exactly like it has every day this year. Posters for how to run the quadratic formula or find the cosine of a number or whatever. Desks in perfect rows, even though every other teacher uses tables to make us talk to each other. A perfectly clean whiteboard and a teacher’s desk that’s both straightened up and messy at the same time.
I don’t have time to worry about the glass I’ve spread across the floor. I brush the worst of it off my arms and face. The door’s right there, and once I get through, I can hurry down the hall, past the gigantic fire doors, and rejoin everyone else on the way to the shelter. That’s doable.
The thinling crashes through the window’s remains a moment later. My lungs scream in protest as I draw another ragged breath, and then I’m running again. The thick classroom door—wood with a metal core—opens outward as I jam the handle down.
I rush through, hitting my shoulder on the frame, and slam it shut. It clicks locked, and I lean against the cinderblock wall under a poster telling us that phones aren’t allowed in the classrooms. My lungs burn, but I gratefully suck in a few breaths, then start picking glass shards from my forearms. My fear-sweat smell mixes with the lemon-scented cleaner the janitor uses.
I’m okay, I lie to myself. I’m okay.
But that’s not true. That’s not true at all.
A moment later, the animal/monster/machine crashes into Mrs. Helquist’s door. The reinforced safety glass crinkles over my head, and I scream and pee myself a little. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.
The pale green light from the ‘Exit’ sign and a few red emergency LEDs light my way as I hobble toward a pair of closed fire doors at the end of the math and science wing. My throat tightens; I’ve walked through those doors seven hundred thirty-two times, and they’ve never been closed.
The thinling rips/tears/cuts into Mrs. Helquist’s wooden door; the sound of metal rubbing on metal mixes with splintering wood. I don’t have long, so I grab the fire doors’ handles and heave with all my strength.
Nothing.
I pound on the door. “Someone, help! Open the door! Sora! Dad! Alice! Someone!”
And to my surprise, someone answers. “Claire?! Claire, is that you?! I lost Dad! I can’t find him!” Alice’s high-pitched, panicky voice is muffled by six inches of steel. She’s not the calm, traffic-directing valedictorian she was two minutes ago. So, that’s something.
“He’s not here! Open the door!” Glass shatters behind me.
I hear Alice shake her handles, then try to push the doors. “Claire, they won’t move! Hey, quit pushing! Fuck!”
Alice is swearing. Perfect Alice is swearing. The door’s far side quiets for a moment, then I hear her voice again.
I said to remember that Alice is a liar, right? And that it was gonna be important. This is part of why.
“Claire, the doors won’t move! They’re coming! I’ve got to go! I’m sorry! I’ll find someone! Someone will come for you!”
I shout something. I’m not sure what. She’s lying.
Then, just like Mom, she drives in the dagger and pierces my heart. “It’s going to be okay, Claire. It’s going to be okay.”
I scream at the door and pound on its steel bulk until my hands can’t pound anymore. Then I kick. But she doesn’t come back. She’s gone. Perfect, fake Alice. She’s abandoned me—her sister! The dark hall presses around me, the exit sign’s wavering circle of green light barely holding it back. My throat’s tight and dry, and between that, my not-quite-recovered lungs, and my screaming, it hurts to breathe. Somewhere down the hall, the thinling keeps clawing/tearing/cutting into Mrs. Helquist’s door, and it’s going to find me, and I can’t stop it.
I slump down next to the locked fire doors. There’s no way through. I can’t get to the shelter in the basement next to the office off the main hall, and that’s the only place that’s gonna be safe.
Down the hall, Mrs. Helquist’s classroom door splinters. I listen to the wood snap and fragment; as I do, I hear something else. A ringing in my ears. It’s quiet, but it’s there—another thinning pushing against the URS somewhere nearby.
I didn’t like the last truth I found. But maybe this one will be better. It can’t be worse. As the thinling’s jaws/claws/saws continue shredding the door, I push myself up, wobble as my vision blackens, and lean against the wall for a moment. I’m not used to being woozy, but I don’t have time to wait for it to fade, either. The thinling’s claw/jaw/saw breaks through, but I’m already gone, hobbling down the hall after the ringing in my ears.