Drift pattern, p.1
Drift Pattern, page 1
drift patcn
bI
jQj rIt pajit
“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”
~ Galileo Galilei
For my father for exposing me to the world of science fiction (and specifically time travel stories).
What I would give to travel back in time to place this book in your hands.
prOlxg
~ One ~
August 9th, 2012
Luci Gaudiano closes her eyes. The twelve-year-old allows the numbers to form in her mind with the softness of a flower bud opening in a warm beam of sunlight. A constant stream of summer air pours in through her slightly cracked backseat window. It feels good allowing it to play in her long, dark curls of hair. “Ah ha, 1,510,010,620!” she announces triumphantly. Though she is certain of the calculation, the girl opens her eyes to ask, “I’m sure 520.89 multiplied by 2,898,904.98954 equals 1,510,010,620. Am I right?”
“Nope, you’re way off,” her mother says from the front seat, making an effort to conceal the calculator app on her phone screen.
“What do you mean?” the twelve year old demands, leaning forward as much as the seatbelt will allow. “Yes, 1,510,010,620 is right.”
Her mother grins, caught in her fib. “Why do you even ask?”
“She likes to hear that she’s right,” the father answers, shooting a quick glance into the rearview mirror. “She wants to hear you say it. I don’t blame her; it is pretty impressive.”
“Gimmie another one,” Luci says. “In the trillions this time.”
“I don’t think this calculator can go that high. Anyway, we’ll be there in a few minutes, and my battery’s about to die.”
Her mother turns to her father driving. “I don’t know why you pay that Tim Callahan guy to do the taxes. Luci could do it for you in a fraction of the time, and for free.”
“Better than that,” he says, “I say we head to Vegas before school starts back up and make a killing having her count cards.”
The remark earns him a playful punch in the arm from her mother.
“Papa,” Luci says, exasperated, “they won’t let me on the casino floor until I’m twenty-one.”
“How do you even know things like that?” her mother asks, looking back to face her.
The girl shrugs. “Just do. In 3,401 days, I turn 21.”
The man laughs as he merges into a small cluster of traffic. “It’s a date then.”
“You’ll have her do no such thing,” her mother scolds him.
He ignores the chastisement. “Seriously, though, Luci-poo, I think you should consider joining that Mathletics thing. You’ve really got a gift.”
“I told you not to call me that anymore.”
“Call you what?”
“She doesn’t like to be called ‘Luci-poo,’” her mother says.
“Since when?”
“For a while now,” Luci answers sharply. “It’s baby talk, and I’m almost thirteen.”
“Your birthday isn’t until December, but even then, you’ll always be my Luci-poo.”
“Papa!”
He rolls his window down to motion a car to cut in front of him. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you.”
“I don’t like your deals.”
He suppresses his laughter. “I’ll make a deal that I won’t call you that if you join the Mathletics Club that Mrs. Richards keeps emailing us about.”
There’s a pause as Luci goes on the assertive. “How’s about I make a deal with you? Think of three super high numbers this side of a million. I’ll multiply the first two in my head and divide by the third and have the number for you before we get to the dog shelter.”
“I feel like I’m being hustled.”
Her mother shifts to him. “I think you are.”
“So, what do you get if you do this?” he asks.
“When she does it.”
“Will I have to stop asking you to join Mathletics Club?”
“I want Pepé.”
“What’s a Pepé?” he asks.
She runs her fingers up and down the edges of the seatbelt. “He’s the little black and white one . . . at the shelter.”
He shoots a look over to the woman. “You let her name one of the rescue dogs? That’s a bad idea.”
She raises her hands in mock surrender. “No, this is the first I’m hearing about it.”
“Please, Papa,” Luci interjects.
“Luci-p—” he catches himself before adding the offending cutesy suffix. “Luci, I told you that we can’t get a dog right now; it wouldn’t be fair to it. The apartment’s too small.”
Luci pleads, “Pepé is small and could stay in my bedroom. I’d keep him in there and he’d never leave.”
Her mother softly interjects, “Luci, that’s not a good life for a dog, big or little.”
“When I said I’d think about it, we were talking about moving to a house with a yard,” he says defensively.
“Your father’s promotion means we’ll need to stay in the city for a while longer for him to be closer to the project.”
He adds, “But it’s definitely something to consider for the future.”
“For the future?” Luci scoffs. “That’s the same thing you said last month when we went to work at the shelter.” She clenches her rolled-up Sudoku magazine. “You keep changing it.”
“Well, I guess it’s like Yogi Berra said: the future isn’t what it used to be.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. You always say that when you want to break a promise.”
“I never promised,” he says, looking over his shoulder at the girl. All humor is gone from his voice. “I said we’ll see what the future holds.”
Her mother attempts to cool the situation down. “Luci, you know that we love the dogs at the shelter, all of them. It’s just not the right time is all.”
He nods. “When things get a little more—”
At first, Luci thinks it’s an explosion until realizing the car is spinning out of control on the bridge. She’s mercilessly yanked to the side until being violently restrained by her seatbelt. Not only does the harness forbid any additional movement, but the force of the band slamming her back squeezes the air from her lungs. Her head jolts back hard against the seat. Loose fragments of broken windshield glass sprinkle her lap and the seat beside her.
As the whirling subsides, her mother wails her father’s name. “Anthony!” The sound is mournfully horrifying.
Luci, seated directly behind him, can’t see his condition. The panic in her mother’s voice makes her panic. What’s wrong with him? She can only see the dark curls of his hair and his head slumped forward. “Mama?” she feebly utters, gingerly massaging the deep soreness in her chest.
She doesn’t answer, only screaming hysterically through her hands covering her face at whatever she sees beside her.
A second impact jolts them.
There’s no spinning this time, but Luci feels the crunch of the collision in the front quickly followed by the jolt of a stiff impact to the back of the car.
The ghastly clamor of metal scraping and contorting shifts her mother’s attention from Papa’s state to what’s happening on the other side of the windshield. Luci makes out the top chrome mesh grille of a truck through the cracked spider’s web of glass, a fractured image kaleidoscope of horror.
Mama screams “No!” so loudly in the confined space that Luci clasps her ears. The girl sobs, trying to understand why this is happening to them.
Her mother turns to her, crazed eyes wide with fear. “Luci, we’ve got to get out! The driver’s pushing us over the guard railing!”
“What?” Luci asks shaking her head. “Who—”
“Just undo your belt. There isn’t much time!”
Luci’s hands are not her own; the adrenaline raging through her tiny frame makes her fingers twitch and spasm. “I can’t . . . I can’t get it!” she shouts. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
There’s a sickly sensation of the car’s angle shifting as the front end begins to lift off the asphalt.
“I’ll help you, baby,” she shouts, “as soon as I get mine off.”
The truck engine growls and revs its mechanical fury. The demon-like shriek of oversized tires grinding against the bridge pavement flinging gravel in every direction is terrifying.
Luci, crying, frantically grapples with her seat’s harness, but it’s no use.
The car’s already at an impossible angle common only to queasy carnival rides.
Her mother shouts her name as the car begins to tip and thrusts her hand in the backseat. She squeezes Luci’s hand like a vise, preventing her from snapping the buckle loose. “Keep it on!” she shouts. “We’re going to fall!”
Luci experiences a queer sense of weightlessness as the car goes over the edge of the high point of the bridge.
The sensation doesn’t last.
The back of the car slams into the water with a ferocious thunderclap, snapping Luci’s head forward in her seat for a third time. The taste of iron in her blood flows from her freshly busted lip into her mouth.
The roar of lake water into the car’s interior through Luci’s partially opened window and the shattered windshield replace the noise of Mama’s wails. It’s unexpectedly cold, and Luci stiffens to the chill. The vehicle sinks quickly. Sunlight from overhead fades from the cracked windshield as their descent speeds up. Luci’s heart pounds in her ears as water rushes in, sounding like manic applause. Splashes of cold water peltin
She coughs uncontrollably, triggering her lungs to gasp for any life-giving oxygen that can be found. Bubbles forcefully escaping upward to the surface mockingly assault her ears. The rapid descent abruptly halts when the back of the car embeds in the sandy floor of the lake with a shuddering thump. Intolerable water pressure smashes against her like a suffocating lead blanket.
Luci finally frees herself from her seatbelt, but bright stars of light swirl around in her vision, confirming she’s running out of time. Her lightheaded disorientation of floating in darkness is petrifying, but she must press through the fear. She knows if she slows even for a moment, she will die—and she’s the only one that is still awake enough to do anything for the three of them.
The front of the vehicle steadily lowers to the lake floor basin. Luci floats against the car’s roof. Her oxygen-deprived lungs burn in agony. The nose of the vehicle reaches the lake’s sandy bottom with a sluggish thud, leveling off.
She swims downward, groping in the darkness for the door handle. Bright sparks of light crisscross in her eyes as every cell in her body aches, screaming out for precious air.
The horror that she’s going to die in this water cage grips her heart.
She wrestles with the slippery handle. Above ground, the door would open easily, but at this depth, the outside pressure’s too great against it.
Luci’s lungs feel like they’re on fire, and her muscles revolt against her commands, drifting into a semi-lethargic state. She is losing this fight.
With the little strength she still possesses, Luci scrambles to position her back against the door. She snatches the handle behind her and pushes off the seat with her tennis shoes to gain leverage to open the door.
Luci rejects that this is how she dies—it can’t be. She pushes her back against the door for a final time.
It is not enough. Her world goes black.
~ Two ~
“There she is,” the man with sparkling blue eyes says. “My name is Daniel.”
Luci struggles to keep her eyelids open. She wants to ask why the small room they’re in is shaking from side to side, but there’s something covering her nose and mouth. She tries to remove it but can’t raise her hand to her face.
“Blue-eyes” must see her panicked expression; he leans in closer. His speaking is over-enunciated. “You were in a car accident and went into the lake . . . but you’re okay now.”
Equally frightening, Luci discovers that she can’t turn her head to the source of the other voices in the small space, nor can she determine the source of the electronic chirps and beeps.
Daniel “blue-eyes” is smiling at her, but it’s not a true smile. It’s too big to be real. “We performed CPR and stitched up a nasty laceration on your leg. You’re riding in an ambulance now to the hospital. We just want to do a little checkup there to make sure that everything’s good.” The smile expands.
One of the other voices mentions something about blood pressure. Another calls out a dosage of Zosyn.
Luci tries to ask “blue-eyes” about her parents, but she’s too sleepy to form the sounds.
So sleepy . . . so slee—
~ Three ~
Luci’s throat is as raw as if she has gargled thumbtacks, making breathing painful. Opening her eyes requires surprising effort. She anticipates seeing Daniel “blue-eyes” hovering over her, but instead, an antiseptic white ceiling slowly comes into focus, revealing that she’s no longer in transport. The plastic tube in her nose partially obstructs her view. When she attempts to reach for it to pull it out, she discovers the quilted restraints by her side won’t budge. “Why am I still tied up?”
Claustrophobic panic sets in as she realizes she can’t move her neck or body. Tears stream down her face as she calls out, “Help me . . . someone please . . . I can’t move.” The pressure on her bruised ribs makes her instantly regret trying to shout, and she lets out a pitiful moan.
“Ah, good. You’re awake,” a gravel-worn voice responds from an unseen corner of the room. “My name is Ms. Schofield.”
The cervical collar preventing Luci from turning her neck blocks her peripheral view. She runs her tongue over her swollen lip. “What is all this stuff . . . all these tubes?”
“Hooked up to an I.V. machine—for antibiotics is my guess,” Schofield answers. “You have a pretty serious cut along the length of your leg.”
Luci startles at the unexpected sound of wooden chair legs barking as they’re scraped across the floor toward her. When the chair skids to a stop, Schofield’s leathery face comes into view, the eyes like tiny dark marbles. “Hello, sweetie.”
She disappears for an instant as she bends down and then returns. Looking at a clipboard, she smacks contemplatively. A pointy tongue pushes a piece of hard candy from one side of her mouth to the other and back again. “It says your name is Luci Ann Gaudiano. Is that right?”
“It’s pronounced Loo-chi, not Lucy.”
Schofield makes a note with a Bic pen, mumbling to herself. Her overdone lipstick and makeup scheme makes her look like one of those women during the French revolution she’s studied in history class.
“Why... why am I here? Where are my parents?” Luci has never felt so claustrophobic and vulnerable in all her short life.
The marbles look up from writing. “Standard stuff. They just want to observe you for a bit is all, and, like I said, get antibiotics fighting anything in that lake water you swallowed or that may have gotten into that cut.”
“Where are my parents? I need to be with my family!” Her bruised chest punishes her again for this outburst.
“Doctors are just waiting for the CT scan to come back.” The candy shifts to the opposite cheek. “Shouldn’t be too much longer. You’ve been out of it for a while.”
“I . . . I want my family,” Luci croaks.
A weird smile forms on Schofield’s face, revealing tiny teeth. They’re not baby teeth, but they’re not quite full grown either. “Oh, my dear Luci, it says there is no outside family. You belong to us now.”
“What do you mean . . . belong to who?” Luci scoffs in panic, pulling hard against the foam restraints binding her wrists and forearms. “Where’s my mother and father?” She ignores the ache in her chest in order to shout, “I want them!”
“Your parents are dead.”
pOrt 1
~ One ~
May 22, 1863: The Territory of Colorado
3 miles northeast of Oro City
Tu teritQri uv kolOrodO
3 mIlz nOTEst uv QrO siti
[39.2508229/106.2925238/4.603.391.688/4828:15:35]
mA 22, 1863
prE-hI nO kqwu
Security Minister Pol Cavazos wipes at beads of sweat racing down his plump face. He tries to convince himself that everything will be okay once the stagecoach makes it to Denver City. There’s nothing of any importance in this obscure interval juncture, making it the perfect point in the past to hide the device he’s stolen; nothing here but dirt and a noticeable lack of dentistry among everyone that he’s encountered since his arrival thirty-two and a half hours ago.
The dusty ground quakes beneath twenty-four horse hooves as the carriage bumps along. His meaty hand clings to the overhead leather handhold to steady himself. The air is stiflingly hot; it must be over a hundred degrees inside the musky compartment, but he doesn’t dare pull the burlap curtains back inviting in more dust. Not prone to doing his own “field work,” he recounts he was forty-six the last time he took a leap skip to another time interval that was active, over nine years ago. The only redeeming quality of this irksome journey is that it could be the turning point in the struggle against his adversaries, L’inversione. Though uncertain of what he’s snatched from them, he knows it must be important, and he has it now, not those insane anarchists.
Cavazos is the rickety charter’s sole passenger, but he feels more of a prisoner as the Concord coach unmercifully bounces all 443 pounds of him around. Despite this abuse, he pounds the ceiling of the cab with an open palm. He shouts above the noise for the Pinkerton men to go faster. Though the reinsman doesn’t reply directly, there’s a sharp crack of the leather ribbon followed by the whinny of one of the horses outside.
