Wattys shortlist 2021. One morning the sun rises a few hours early, striking levitating skyscrapers in Soliara ahead of schedule. People in the streets stop to look up at the sky and then down at their watches. Most of them, puzzled but disbelieving...
Something told me to go to the roof, I thought it was the stars looking out for me, leaving a trail only I can see, leading me with stardust like breadcrumbs to Cristo.
A link opened even though I didn't ask for it, and I ran out into the snow to see the sun was coming up fast and the sky was clearing of clouds fast. I don't know why I picked up Cristo's gnomon, I felt like a sleepwalker. I ran toward him. He was lying where Leander had impaled him at the edge of the roof. Leander stood sentinel staring at the sun.
I put the gnomon in Cristo's hand, I don't know why; I did not want him to heal the wound, but I don't think he could, whether because he was dead or because he was sleepwalking too. We were all just following the commands of the stars. His fingers curled around it, it was like a twitch but gentle in slow motion, and weak. His eyes did meet mine but that was the last movement from his lifeless body. He was dead. I waited to see what would happen. He couldn't raise the gnomon or point it, but the magic happened anyway.
I couldn't see. My field of vision was exchanged, I thought, for a dream, and I saw things. People, Nova, the tower, the star dial, a courtyard I didn't know; I heard voices, "About as well as anybody does, I suppose," and "Who even are you?" and "Don't forget where you came from," and "Lie to me, say anything. Make up a reason, I don't care if it's the truth." I don't know how long I listened and eavesdropped, I spied, I heard and watched, "Come in," pause, "Come in, please, it's open," pause, "Well, Prince, if you're going to come in, come in, sit down," said Doctor Reveur, I didn't know him well but I could see and hear him. "I'm not going to ask where you're from. It doesn't matter. You're here."
"Have you seen my shadow?" says Candra to Cristo, and then to Franco she says, "Why is Nova Dasilva still alive?" but Cristo wasn't there, I see things he hasn't, these aren't his memories, they belong to others, others he met today, events of the day unfolding like scenes, and I don't think he's giving me Diana Aemilia saying, "Plus, I need new accommodations," and Milana Nox saying, "And a live-in cook?"
I think the stars have been collecting them and pass them on to me — giving me today. And then I see images that can't be today. I see a little girl in a summer floral pink blue yellow dress and she's Nova and she says, "Daddy, we don't have enough books, I want to go to the library," and Candra takes her hand. The little girl Nova is talking to me. Cytheria Demarco is younger too, when she says, "About as well as anybody does, I guess," but this isn't the past because I see me too and I say, "Candra, will you take her?" and that never happened, and I know it isn't a delusion because in seconds or maybe time doesn't even come into it, might not have passed at all, I see every second and I watch every second of the next one hundred years, and when I open my eyes, I forget most of it, almost all of it, it's a memory as if it's one hundred years and one day later and it all happened to me, I know all the details, but it's all just a memory of a century.
From every perspective, not just my own.
Most of it fades, but I think I get the message. The memory of what feels like yesterday — yesterday I'm on the tenth floor in an office with people shouting at me and I say, "I don't care if reality crumbles, the only other option tonight is death. I'm sending him back. Sending him back to change it. That's the only way left to us to stop it. Stop the president back when he wasn't so strong, consolidates so much power that we're powerless to stop him. If reality doesn't crumble, we might actually survive." And the stars show me this and I understand that in a hundred years I can be sitting at that desk on the brink of death, or I can survive, but I'm not allowed to break the fabric of existence, and I have been shown everything for the express purpose of holding everything together. They, the stars, say this is all my fault and if it all falls apart it will be no one's fault but my own.
So I know the plan now, because it's a blueprint of what already happened. I can make alterations — but I have to be very. Very. Careful.
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