Any You: Any Now, #2

By William Bowden

A creature from another dimension had gotten into her head, eviscerated her mind, and gouged out her soul. Now physicist Rhoda Mollo finds herself where she'd really rather not be, cast away on some far-flung shore of Any Now, trapped in a nightmare of the real and not real, slave to her own heresies.

 

No matter how hard she tries she can no longer slip into that happy state that simply accepts reality as it appears to be. Her mind won't let her—it has seen the illusion for what it is, the magic trick revealed.

 

But she is set on her course of action. To play the hand she had been dealt, if indeed she had been dealt any hand at all.

 

Her adversaries are the mysterious Seventh Day of the Veil, a pair of individuals seemingly revealed as gatekeepers to the predicament she now finds herself in.  

 

There will be no seeking then out. Pursuit would be fruitless.

 

They must find her.

 

And to achieve that Rhoda will have to play them at their own game.

 

Any You is another mind-twisting journey through Any Now, exposing the dark nature of reality with far reaching consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Bowden
• Release date: Aug 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393587101

William Bowden

William Bowden is a British Science Fiction author. He lives near the city of Bristol and when not writing rules over his unruly garden.

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Self-published by William Bowden in 2017

Text Copyright © 2017 William Bowden

All Rights Reserved

The right of William Bowden to be identified as the author has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. All characters in this work are fictitious and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover art by Jurik Peter / shutterstock.com

NSA

Horace Griffin had never wanted the job in the first place. The problem had been that nobody else had wanted it either. Not in this political climate, where one wrong foot is to be crucified by the media and held aloft as, at best, inept, with scant regard for the decades of experience that had come before. Many a pair of safe hands had fallen by the wayside, humanity seemingly caught in a frenzy of self-defeating chastisement when it came to those who might actually be able to make a difference.

And right now he cannot help but consider his current situation to be one of having wandered into something of a minefield, finding himself where he’d really rather not be—the back of a panel van parked down the street from a residence in suburban Washington, D.C., at 2 a.m.

Director Griffin?

Horace snaps to attention, his mind having wandered, the agent looking up at him with some concern. There is a lot at stake—being caught would look very bad indeed, given that the NSA are not supposed to spy on the American people, let alone—

They’re inside, says the agent, gesturing to the video bank of body-cam streams.

But they had found the damn things in the first place.

* * *

Waiting for the Tylers to take a vacation had not been an option, and besides, an extended trip might see the merchandise being taken along for the ride. Contrived emergencies had also been ruled out. They had come close with an evening at the theater—a popular family musical was in town, and tickets had been impossible to come by, save for a chance find facilitated by the NSA, but the nine-year-old daughter had come down with a cold at the last minute.

So, they went with plan B—gassing the family with HIB-2 while they slept. A by-product of hibernation research for extended spaceflight, HIB-2 maintained an extremely stable sleep state from which the subject would not rouse by normal rhythm alone, provided there is no external stimulus—

A crunch of plastic underfoot halts the first agent in his tracks, his two colleagues doing likewise as he backs his boot off the flattened toy.

For all its sophistication, their night-vision headgear had done a poor job when it came to the playthings strewn across the dark carpet. Unfortunately, their target is on the far side of the debris field, the resulting exasperated sighs from the three of them belying their experience in the field, which would normally see them dodging advanced security systems. For that they trained relentlessly. As for this—

"That’s it—right there," squawks the first agent over the sound-proofed comms channel.

A chest of drawers tucked up against the far wall of the living area. 

Tiptoeing through the scattered toys gets him there in seconds, the other two choosing to hang back as he opens the middle drawer.

"They’re not here."

"Try top left, says another voice. Masie moves them around to annoy her brother."

The three smaller drawers are carefully pulled open and inspected, none yielding the subject of their search, leaving just the bottom drawer.

"Got them. Making the switch."

* * *

Horace watches the body-cam streams—three inside, three outside. The Tylers will wake up in the morning none the wiser, the HIB-2 wearing off naturally without any side effects, and with no trace of the home invasion they are currently sleeping through, there being none more invisible than agents of No Such Agency.

And that would mark the end of the NSA’s involvement, with the hot potato being tossed into his lap.

Well, we’ll see about that.

The president may have nominated him as director of the FBI, and the Senate may have ratified the appointment, but neither can dictate his actions.

They could fire him, though.

Swing low, sweet chariot.

ANY NOW

A creature from another dimension, a Swan, had gotten into her head, eviscerating her mind and gouging out her soul.

Now it seems to Rhoda Mollo that she finds herself where she’d really rather not be: cast away on some far-flung shore of Any Now, trapped in a nightmare of the real and not real, slave to her own theoretical heresies.

No matter how hard she tries, she can no longer slip into that happy state that simply accepts the world as it appears to be. Her mind won’t let her—it has seen the illusion for what it is, the magic trick revealed.

What solace there is to be had comes only from the knowledge that it is merely a different perspective upon which she now gazes. Reality as it ever was, those around her no more causal reflections of the real than they were in the perspective from which she had been shifted.

She had traversed a divine circle—a shift through Any Now space-time that should have returned her to its own starting point, her perspective of reality unaltered, and with only a subconscious sense of the events experienced.

But instead Rhoda had awoken with the mother of all hangovers and a feeling of déjà vu so overwhelming that it had left her reeling with foreboding and dread, portents of a terrifying truth quickly realized—that the shift had taken her back to the day after she’d been kicked off the Manhattan Project, her sorrows drowned the night before in a bottle of vodka, the morning after relived for a second time.

Monica had been there, just as she had been…before, and just as Rhoda remembered. Except that it was clear to Rhoda that Monica remembered nothing and, more importantly, had never heard of a Dr. Felton. As far as Monica was aware, it had been the project’s council that had removed Rhoda, the council being of the opinion that Rhoda sought only to pursue her discredited theories, and not those purported to be the subject of her scientific research.

Although it had not been at the hands of Dr. Felton and the Agency, her removal from New York City’s giant particle accelerator was complete nonetheless. Something of an irony, given that it had been Rhoda’s theoretical work that had seen her banished her to the Manhattan Project in the first place—the project being considered merely fringe science by the mainstream; built by mavericks, for mavericks.

So, no Dr. Felton, and no Agency—Lord Bevan, Caitlin, or Nathan. Rhoda could only imagine that for them, as well as for Monica, Hector, and Joseph, the divine circle had been closed as intended, all having been in the temple’s chapel, and she, not.

Rhoda had let Monica continue in her state of blissful ignorance, telling her nothing, certain that any other course of action would have her seem to be a babbling lunatic in the eyes of her friend and fellow physicist.

Still, the strange history of Any Now had repeated itself, Monica surmising that Rhoda needed her mind taken off things, the ulterior motive being the same, and they had driven out to the Mollo family cottage in the Hamptons, just as before, but this time the journey uneventful—no guns, no kidnappings.

It had been clear to Rhoda that it was simply Monica’s personal agenda that once more took them to the Hamptons, the wealthy Cantor family being neighbors to the Mollo cottage, the son a very eligible bachelor. The same inevitability set to play out all over again. Nevertheless, Rhoda wanted to see it—to experience it—for herself. The manner of it would be undeniable, a small piece of her life relived. The same, but different.

A safe arrival in the Hamptons saw Monica get her man that weekend, and Rhoda had fled the United States for the only place that she could call home.

Her mind was set in its course: to play the hand she had been dealt, if indeed she had been dealt any hand at all, her adversaries the Seven Days of the Veil.

The Six Days had presumably put her here but were beyond her reach. Not so the Seventh Day, who she was certain remained mortal. Or, rather, what passes for mortal when it comes to all the Days of the Veil.

There will be no seeking the Seventh Day. Pursuit would be fruitless.

They must find her.

And to achieve that, Rhoda would have to play them at their own game. 

THE SEVENTH DAY

Their vantage point affords them two distinct views—that of the subject of the excursion and of the facility emerging from the foot of the mountain range, down on the arid plain below. The former, a solidly built young man, has perched himself on an outcropping of rock, from where he has a good view of the latter, the illusion of parallax seemingly placing him perilously close to the edge.

I fear that he might plunge to his certain death, says the female, her heavy European lilt laboring over the concern.

His precipitous situation is not what it seems, the young woman’s male companion assures her, his accent quintessentially English. He is quite safe and, judging from his attire, properly equipped for the terrain.

The same cannot be said of the two of them: a couple of similar youthfulness to the twenty-something upon whom they gaze unseen, he in a smart business suit, she in black leather.

He does seem at ease with the environment about him, agrees the female. A reflection of how surprisingly adapted he is to the task at hand? It is fortuitous that we came across him when we did.

Perhaps, her companion says. But let us not forget the circumstances that led us to him. A situation that remains troubling.

What we have created down there, she says, her gaze shifting to the facility, is a means to an end. Do you suppose that in him there is the potential to be more than just its instigator? Perhaps its inquisitor as well?

I fear his mind will not see that which is not seen, says the male. Though perhaps with a little encouragement…

Would that we should send any to such a fate.

In that regard, one might say that he is as good a choice as any.

DOVECOTE

Machines tend to Dovecote Farm now. No need of herbicides here, with each invader plucked from its hard-won purchase with discriminatory precision. Dovecote has become a garden farm, maintained to conserve the appearance of the countryside and to provide a vista for the Mollo residence, Rhoda’s childhood home.

To some it might be seen as an indulgence—precious land that could be used for agriculture, set aside. But the truth of it is that the fields of Dovecote are no longer commercially viable. The farm is too small, and the undulating hills and valleys of Devon increasingly unable to compete with big agriculture. The future lay with the great continental plains and the skyscraper bio-factories that would follow them.

Mollo Brand had invested heavily in the former for decades and is now fast becoming a pioneer in the latter. Its already huge family fortune is set to be multiplied manyfold, Rhoda its sole heiress.

Mindful of the responsibility she would one day have to bear, her parents had sought to keep her grounded—not by excluding her from what wealth could provide, but by making sure she developed a natural resistance to its power. They had brought Rhoda up on the farm so that, for a while at least, she would know it in a time when there was still hard work to be done each and every day.

Reflecting on that path through life, Rhoda cannot help but see another circle—one that has led back to Dovecote, and the fields in which she had once toiled, fields now tended to by trundling cultivators guided by the very latest in sophisticated automation.

Completing that particular circle, Rhoda finds herself where she would rather be—in the shade of a solitary tree overlooking the farm in the valley below, the village of Nymet Hache beyond.

A place to sit and finally be able to contemplate her situation.

* * *

The first order of business, in Rhoda’s mind, is to dispense with Any Now—or, rather, dispense with its tendency to undermine what would otherwise be a rational view of the world.

Fortunately, the effects of a perspective shift diminish greatly with the degree of separation from its epicenter—in a manner not unlike parallax, except that instead of distance reducing the apparent displacement of an object viewed, the dimension, and its measure, is probabilistic in nature.

To experience a shift in perspective on reality, one must be observing a dynamic system governed by probability. The current state of that system is the accumulation of all the chance events that occurred over time, right up to the shift itself, such that the observer sees one outcome before the shift, and another after.

In one perspective, the cat in the box is alive; in the other, it is dead.

Even Rhoda finds it easier to think in layman’s terms when it comes to the vagaries of Any Now.

Here, in England’s green and pleasant land, she is far from any other observed perspective. She hasn’t visited Dovecote Farm for over six months, and the tiny telltale details that would otherwise reveal a shift in perspective are near invisible.

The way a particular stone lies in a flower bed, the patina on a door handle, a recent mark on a wall, the position of a vase on a mantelpiece—she hadn’t made a note of them before and so does not see the differences now. But, nevertheless, they are there.

They are everywhere.

A singular monobloc reality, as if viewed from a room with two windows, the vista from each ever-so-slightly different. Any Now, as Rhoda had dubbed it.

If her transit along the divine circle had been complete, there would be no such vagaries to plague her. She would have stepped in front of the other window, then stepped back again.

But Rhoda finds herself still standing before that other window—or rather, she corrects herself, some other window—the world outside in this place mercifully familiar, something that cannot be said, ironically, of the familiar itself; New York City had been a nightmare, everything she looked at revealing some small tweak to reality.

And no matter how much she had told herself that nothing had actually changed—that she was simply seeing the same reality from a different viewpoint—she could not escape it. Her own mind kept hauling her back as it constantly sought to render a self-consistent experience from the sensory inputs into her brain, calling out the difference between the before and the after at every opportunity.

She could survive it, even accept it, but the distraction had been too great for her to think clearly, to reason through the set of circumstances that have beset her, her current predicament, and what to do about it.

Returning to Dovecote Farm had shut the screaming madness out, all the horrors banished.

All, save one.

In the before—Rhoda choosing to rationalize the experience of Any Now perspectives as temporal rather than alternate—her parents had come to New York.

The Agency had secretly press-ganged her, along with Monica Satori, into investigating the temple of the White Swan, the wonders they witnessed there enough to foster complicity in the Agency’s plans. But the moment they had they been reported missing by the Manhattan Project, the Mollo corporate machine had swung into action, its owners flying to New York in search of their daughter.

A bender in