Silent Symmetry (The Embodied trilogy) (19 page)

But the thought of
even calling or texting him made me squirm. It would be soooo awkward.

Then I snapped out of it. No, Kari, you have to see him. It’s the only way you’ll know for sure. One look in his eyes and you’ll know.

* * * * *

I took a chance that he was scheduled to work that afternoon. I showered and put on my shapeliest jeans – trying to look good without looking like I was trying
, obviously – then headed out into a surprisingly warm late-December day.

Il Forno was an eatery on
7th Avenue that also made great lattes. Cruz was one of the busboys, and I knew that if I strolled in to “study” on my laptop during the dead zone between lunch and supper, I could grab a coffee and wait nonchalantly for him to show up. Yes, I would be nonchalant. Maybe suave... blasé even. Or some other cool-sounding French adjective.

Fail. Big-time. I trolled around YouTube for an hour while nervously watching the back of the restaurant like a hawk. (Right. More like a pigeon on espresso.) Then I saw his shape reflected in the glass behind the bar and almost dropped my coffee.

Even though the reflection was distorted, it was definitely him I could see through the open door to the kitchen, stacking a pile of aluminum trays on the counter. But his posture was slightly off – like he was wounded or something. His head was lowered. His usual panther-like movements seemed lethargic. I felt my pulse quicken and my temperature rise as the reflection came out of the kitchen.

He didn’t notice me at the other side of the restaurant. He walked past the dessert bar and through another door. But that briefest of glances at him was all that it took.

I knew instantly that I wanted to be with Noon. Whatever the reason, or whatever the emotion, that was the one thing I was sure of. I didn’t even care anymore what had happened between Cruz and Aranara. I didn’t feel jealous or angry, because... well, because I didn’t feel anything for Cruz when I saw him.

All I could think about was the sensation of
Noon’s thoughts filling my mind, of his lips on mine.

I was about to close my laptop and head back home when an email came in. My heart skipped a beat as I saw that the sender was
Mom.

“Hey Kari – hope you’re well. I’ve had an amazing time. Bob is wonderful. We are returning tomorrow. We’ll be landing at
2pm in his private jet at Teterboro, NJ. Would you come meet me at the airport? I miss you a lot and I can’t wait to see you and tell you all about the trip. I only have intermittent internet access so no need to reply. Love, Mom.”

Or maybe it wasn’t from
Mom.

It was
definitely her email address though. I wrote a quick reply, hoping to catch her while she was still online: “Hey! Just got your email. Will you pay for my cab to the airport? Luv ya, Kari.”

I hit Send and waited. If Bob had a private jet, why ask for me to go to the trouble of trekking out to
New Jersey? I’d never even heard of Teterboro. I looked it up on Wikipedia and, okay, it was real enough and not that far away. But still – it didn’t really sound like Mom in the email.

I waited
... then I got nervous that Cruz would come back and see me and things would get all weird. What should I do though? Should I go to the airport? What if it was a trap?

There was only one person who could give me advice, and that was
Noon. Besides, I needed his calming voice and soft, ancient eyes. My freak-out on the rooftop the night before seemed like a century ago. Maybe, for an Embodied, it really was a century ago. Or maybe they’re time-travelers. In which case, why not just go back and fix things?

Wait
... if they can do that, what would stop them being able to go back to the day that Dad had his accident? Oh, man... what if?

I slammed the laptop shut and ran out of the restaurant. I didn’t realize that Cruz had reappeared and seen me.

* * * * *

I knocked on the door of the
Temple of Truth apartment. This was the first time I’d gone right up to it in plain sight. No sneaking through tunnels and creeping around anymore.

I folded my arms and tapped my foot impatiently. Then I heard
Noon’s voice in my head.

“Go home, Kari. I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”

That totally weirded me out. I stood there for another minute, wondering if I should do what his voice had told me. I reasoned that it wasn’t really much different than getting a text from him, and did as he had asked.

When I opened my door to him a few minutes later, he smiled slightly and I melted inside. He was right – he had been with me my whole life. I knew why his presence was so calming. Because it felt like home. But now, since last night, there was another factor – the excitement of making out with him had awakened a whole bunch of other feelings, both physical and emotional.

I pulled him into the apartment and kissed him. He seemed surprised, but soon responded, and we continued, right there in the doorway, for I don’t know how long.

Eventually he stopped and caught his breath. I wondered – was his Embodied form used to
... intimacy? To being touched the way that I touched him?

“Kari,” he said, “They won’t let me see you.”

My heart sank. “What do you mean?”

“The
Temple of Truth project is bigger than me or you. It’s bigger than...”

I completed his sentence for him: “Than our love? Isn’t love the biggest thing in the world? In the universe? That’s what I grew up believing.”

“There won’t even be a universe if we keep seeing each other.”

“Why?!! What’s this all about?”

He walked past me, deep in thought. Then he turned back as though he’d had some brilliant insight.

“Have you ever heard of the observer effect in physics?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“It means that the observer of certain experiments will affect their outcome merely by observing.”

“Okaaay...”

“Did you ever see your
mom check the pressure in her car tires?”

Where
the eff was he going with this?

“Yes, with one of those gauges that looks a bit like a
silver pen.”

“Right, so when you push that gauge into the tire valve to check the pressure, you always let out some air, and that changes what the pressure was before you measured it.”

“Come on, Noon, get to the point!”

“The point is that us falling in love is affecting the project.”

I shook my head. “I think you’re just scared. I don’t think you’ve ever felt emotions like this before.”

He bit his lip. “You’re right – I am scared.”

This admission took me by surprise.

“But that’s not what’s stopping me,” he continued. “There’s so much more at stake here.”

“I really don’t get it, but I know you’re not going to tell me.”

“I can’t.”

We stood there in silence for a few seconds. Then I remembered why I’d wanted to see him in the first place.

“So if you’ve been visiting Earth for thousands of years
... I need to know... um, I need to ask you something. It would mean the world to me and I’d be grateful to you for the rest of my life.”

The tension drained from his face. He really did care about me. It was totally obvious.

“Okay. Whatever I can do.”

“So, my dad died when I was
four. A freak car accident.”

“I know.”

He knew. I guess if he really had been with me my whole life, he would know.

“
Okay, well, here’s the thing. Can you go back in time? Can you go back and save him – change whatever it was that made him crash? Like, if a deer running across the road made him swerve, scare it away a few seconds earlier? Or put sand on the road if he skidded on black ice?”

His eyes suddenly
looked pained and although it was subtle, his perfect features seemed to... tighten somehow. He even lowered his gaze for a millisecond. He never did that.

“I’m sorry,
but I can’t.”

I could feel my throat
constricting and my voice getting higher. “Look, I’ve seen science fiction movies. I know if you do that you’ll be changing the timeline or whatever for the entire future and maybe you and I will never meet, or one day Mom and him would have a big fight about her leaving for New York and get a divorce, but I don’t care because I just want to have known him, for him to be there in my life somewhere – not just a shadowy memory and a bunch of old photos.”

Noon
put his hands on my shoulders and stared deep into my eyes. Calmness had returned to his face. My breathing rate started to slow down. I gulped, blinking back the tears.

“I can’t because
it’s simply impossible, Kari. The Embodied aren’t able to travel through time.”

Was he lying?

“The Dark Universe is in the same time stream as the Light Universe,” he continued. “In fact they’re both part of the same universe. Time flows forward for me the exact same way that it does for you. No one, nothing, can swim against that current, whether they are in the Dark or Light Universe. It simply cannot happen.”

“But you and Aranara were there thousands of years ago in ancient
Greece!”

“Yes.”

“So...?”

“So, we have different life spans to human beings. We aren’t organic like you. In fact we aren’t even life forms the same way that creatures in your world are.”

“But you live and die?” I asked.

“We just
... kind of... persist. The best analogy would be self-replicating computer code.”

I didn’t give a rat
’
s ass about what kind of analogy was best – my brain was desperately searching for a solution. I guess I’d gotten my hopes up too much and couldn’t face the reality that there was no more chance of restoring my father’s life today than there had been yesterday.

Noon
stroked my hair. “I’m really sorry.”

I shuffled into the kitchen. “I’m so thirsty.”

Noon followed me. “You heard from your mother?”

I filled a glass, wondering how he could know. Right – he had a direct link to my brain – of course he knew.

“Yeah. I got this email.”

I held
up my phone for him to read it.

“I don’t think it’s really from her though.”

“I’ll accompany you to the airport,” he said. “Even if it isn’t your real mom, it’s still the only way we have of finding her.”

I chugged the glass of water and wiped a drip from my chin.

“Okay.”

“Good – I’ll come get you around 2. But I have to go now. I really can’t spend time with you.”

“Fine – so go,” I said, and turned away.

A few seconds later I heard the apartment door close. And he was gone.

Chapter 9

Memory #7: I’m on Dad’s shoulders. We’re walking down Main Street and I’m queen of the world. We see a street vendor selling cotton candy to some kids half a block away and I plead with Dad to buy me some. He says yes, but then ducks into a store and plops me down on a chair while he chats to the woman behind the counter. I tug at his pants and he ignores me. They talk and laugh for what seems like hours. When we leave the store, the cotton candy vendor has disappeared and I cry all the way home.

I streamed a few shows and ate junk for the rest of the day. I felt like I’d turned into an adult in the space of a week. And not a very upstanding adult at that. But the reality was that I had zero way
of dealing with the stuff that was happening to me. No emotional toolkit, I guess a shrink would say. My choices weren’t right or wrong, just lacking experience.

One of those choices was to post on Facebook that I was really missing someone. Of course within minutes my
friends were all, “Sounds like Kari’s in love!” and “Ooooh... tell us more!” like they’d read a celebrity scoop in a gossip mag. I tried to smiley it all away, but finally had to log off to extricate myself from the conversation.

Night came and went with me stuck to the couch, laptop still open on my stomach. When the doorbell rang I was wearing the same PJ’s I’d had on since about
4 o’clock the day before. I blinked away the haze from my eyes, wiped the drool from my cheek and staggered to the door, expecting to see Noon.

I opened it, looking like a newborn warthog, and there stood Elle, as immaculate and stunning as ever.

“Oh...” was all I could manage.

“Kari. May I come in please?” Even her voice was beautiful.

“Um, sure,” I answered, resisting the urge to sniff my armpit to confirm the worst. “Could you, um, hold tight for a sec while I, like, make myself more human?”

Way to go. Just the thing to say to an alien.