28. Chapter 28
Chapter 28
L earning how to freeze time was a major pain in the butt.
The training happened in the living room, where Will and Emily met for an hour after school. Thanks to Debbie’s multitude of extracurriculars, they had the time to be on their own.
They used the television as an indicator of stopping time; not that it had happened so far. Emily thought she came close two or three times, that the sound slurred as if the TV was put in slow-motion, but it only lasted a second, and then it was back to normal.
At least Will was enjoying himself. “Fiction. This must be fiction.” He flinched as a woman pushed another one down the stairs on the TV screen. “By the horn spoon! Say it is fiction.”
“Yup. Definitely.” They sat on the couch, Emily in a butterfly pose, hoping the meditativeness would help her focus. She’d explained television to Will as best as she could, and while he understood there’d be fictional and non-fictional channels, he had trouble distinguishing them.
He changed the channel. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to watch soap operas. Even Nicky’s favorite one.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Same old. Trying to thread the needle between focusing real hard and not farting.”
“Do you have to be so vulgar?”
“Farts are a part of us. There’s nothing vulgar about them. Like there’s nothing vulgar about legs .” She clenched her hands into fists and gritted her teeth. Focus, focus, focus. “You know, this would be easier if you gave me more detailed instructions.”
“There are no detailed instructions for corporeal acceleration. Everyone does it in their own way. You only need to discover what the right way is for you.”
“What if it’s farting?” She opened one eye to squint at him—did he roll his eyes? Maybe she was getting to him. “Okay, how about you demonstrate it again? Maybe I’ll see something that will help.”
Will cast her a doubtful look, but focused on the TV, up to a point where he almost went cross-eyed. His trigger for a time freeze was sound. He focused on whatever he was hearing, preferably speech or music, and held on to one specific word or note, trying to delay it. It worked sometimes; he admitted he was no master in freezing time. Fabienne tried by watching a pendulum. None of those things had worked so far.
Will suddenly disappeared from the couch and turned up in the corner of the room. She hadn’t even blinked.
“Never gets old,” she whispered. “Okay, I can do this.” She focused harder. White spots appeared on her eyelids as she strained to do something, anything, with her body. The sound of television blurred into white noise. Stop, accelerate. Stop, accelerate.
“Nope!” She relaxed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. “I can’t do it. Not this way. Maybe I do need to fart. But for that, it’ll probably be best if you aren’t—”
Will had sat back down, and his gaze was glued to the television, displaying black-and-white clips of marching soldiers and tanks. “Not fiction,” he said in a grave voice.
“Yeah, that’s one of the world wars. The first one, I think. The second one usually has more planes and people saluting.”
“World wars?”
“Oh, right. Spoilers?” She gave an apologetic smile.
He continued to stare at the screen. It shifted to a narrator before a dark red background, then to pictures of dead soldiers in trenches.
“Maybe you should switch back to the soap opera.”
“It looks horrific. How—why—”
Show off your B- in World History, Emily. “Uh… they assassinated a European Archduke, or something. And then it all went to shit.”
“The entire world?”
“Mostly Europe with the US at the end. But those are all spoilers for you.” She did some quick math—Will would be in his fifties during the First World War. Unlikely he’d fight, but something still clutched at her heart. He’d be there to see it, and she couldn’t imagine it. It was in his future, and at the same time, it was so far in her past she didn’t even consider it her past.
“I’m impressed with the technology your world has to offer,” Will said. “But it is terrifying to see what it has brought.”
“That’s how it works. The more progressive we get, the deadlier.”
“Did they really fall into war because of the death of one man?”
“I think they didn’t like each other much before that. It was kinda like, ‘Okay, now you’ve done it’. Don’t think every assassination ever has led to a war. JFK didn’t—wait, spoilers again. Though, theoretically, that was in the 60s, so you wouldn’t—oh, no, that’s another spoiler—”
“It’s fine. I’m not so optimistic to presume I will live to a hundred.”
“You could.” The sadness settled heavily in her heart. When he wasn’t saying strange things, it was easy to forget Will wasn’t your casual neighborhood boy. By all laws of nature, he shouldn’t even be here. His life had ended long before hers had begun.
“You said you were not good at history, but you know all this,” Will interrupted her thoughts.
“You mean JFK? That’s credit to Sarah. She loves conspiracy theories, and assassinations are the perfect source of those.”
She had to wave her hand in front of Will’s face before he reacted. “What were you thinking about there?”
“There’ll always be men like him.”
Okay, ominous. “Uh, Lee Harvey Oswald?”
“Henson,” Will said, still staring straight in front. “Gideon Henson was the man who recruited my mother. Used her to get rid of the Watchers’ Leader, so he could take his place and get what he wanted—a complete reform of the Watchers. He believed the process of selecting leaders by blood was old-fashioned. Theirs was a free, democratic country, and the Watchers should follow suit.”
“Free country, if you don’t count the slaves.” Emily grimaced. “Sounds like a typical politician.”
“Regardless of what you think of his political opinions, he was clever—and dangerous.”
“He’s the man I have to save her from?”
“In a way, but not quite. He had accomplices. They set a trap for her.”
“But why? If she did her part, why wouldn’t they do theirs and let her go?” With a sigh, Emily leaned on the couch. “I hate bad guys.”
“Henson didn’t want her to get out. He wanted her to do his dirty work and pay for it.”
“But I’m gonna save her?”
“Yes.”
Emily looked at the watch. A week in, and she hadn’t done the T out of time stopping. “No pressure, then.” She squeezed a small button as the side—Will said it connected straight to the barrel and helped channel the time freezing energy—but remembered another thing. “The way I save Fabienne, is that the same way I can also save Mama?”
“I don’t think so.”
She raised an eyebrow. “For once, you don’t know ?”
“I think not, because…” Will weighed his head—once again, he was considering whether to tell her something or not. “There is one method I know of that can enact big change. You create a sort of bubble in which time runs separate. While in the bubble, you can attempt to make changes and then insert those into the continuum.”
“Sounds awesome. So why doesn’t everyone do it that way?”
“One, it requires you to be able to stop time. Very few Watchers knew how to do that. And, the manner in which you do it wasn’t created intentionally. It was discovered by accident, and time travel accidents usually end badly.”
“It’s not a feature, it’s a bug.”
Will squinted. “I don’t see what insects have to do with it.”
“Never mind.” She waved her hand. “Accident or not, you say it can still work. And I’m learning how to stop time. What’s the problem, then?”
“It will also…” Will lowered his eyes to his lap. “Destroy your watch.”
“Oh.” Emily followed with the same move. “So I can’t do it both on your mom and mine.”
“You won’t need to do it with mine. You only need to intercept her, save her from the assassin, and deliver some things that will help in the future.”
“But I need to do that before I can help Mama.”
“And once you do that…”
“Watch goes bye-bye. No more time travel for me.”
He nodded.
Two weeks ago, she'd say it was worth it. But the ball in Hartford had been fun, and she’d made other little trips to tilt various odds into her favor—all with only good outcomes. She’d lose all that.
But if it got her Mama back, she’d do it. Every time. She’d just have to make sure she’d taken care of everything else before that one last trip. And since that would be inside her lifespan, it didn’t matter if she destroyed the watch in the process—she’d be able to will herself back.
“Then let’s get this time-stopping thing going,” she said, more determined than ever. She gritted her teeth and pressed the button on the watch.
A spark flew out.
Emily yelped and dropped it into her lap. “Uh, Gramps?”
“Calm down.” Will picked up the watch, inspected the front, and brushed his fingers over the back case. “How many travels have you made since you started using it?”
“A lot.” Test travels, all those visits to Mama, the travels in Hartford… that one time when she went back to fix her homework after seeing her classmate’s… “Probably dozens.”
“The mainspring barrel likely got worn out. It needs to be reshaped.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s not a problem. The Watchers had to do it all the time. I have the tools we need at home.”
“Oh. Thank god.” Relieved and tired from training, she slumped on the sofa. “Debbie and Nicky will be home soon. I guess you can bring the tools here tomorrow and we’ll fix it?”
“Then I shall see you tomorrow.” As he readied his watch, it emitted a sizzling noise and a small puff of smoke, followed by a spark.
Emily pulled back. “What the…?”
Will dropped the watch, a little gentler than she had, on the sofa.
“I don’t like that spark,” she said.
“It was only in a partial working state. This, I assume, is where the ‘partial’ comes in.” Will met her eyes. “I’m afraid it’s broken.”