Chapter 67 — Trust In Yourself
The Curve of Time, Chapter 67 —— Trust In Yourself, in which Saskia prepares for her dive.
Followed by reflections from the garden.
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— 67 —
Trust In Yourself
Saskia stripped off her jeans and slipped into thermal undergarments. The pressure might be one atmosphere in an ADS suit, but it would get cold as it descended.
The cold, though, was not foremost on her mind. Twice now, Saskia had been burnt turning time around, and though she wasn’t planning to reverse the temporal flow today, she was nonetheless planning to break from its traditional march.
She slipped her blouse over her head and reflected that, possibly, she ought to be more concerned that she planned to uncouple from the world around her at over a thousand feet below the ocean’s surface. An instinctual shudder ran through her body. It was the same trepidation she felt when climbing, right before performing an all points off dyno——a dynamic leap that required abandoning all four points of contact with the wall (in the hopes of latching the rock higher up). In climbing the downside risk was all in your mind; your belay partner mitigated the danger, unless you were free soloing——climbing without a rope. Genuine trust in your partner let you focus on the effort your leap required. It was one of those things that separated great climbers from amateurs.
Unfortunately, Saskia couldn’t see an analogue for her belay partner in today’s circumstances. It was an inauspicious omission in her parallel.
Still, she shrugged and pulled her neoprene booties over her feet.
She collected her street clothes and stuffed them back into her bag, which she was about to stuff into the locker Jeremy had shown her when her phone chirped from the side pocket.
It was Boss-man, and she felt a pang of guilt about having ignored him. She’d never felt obligated to answer his calls, but normally her reasons for snubbing him were rooted in progress she was making on a project he was invested in; they both knew in their heart of hearts that she was destined to have a much bigger impact on the world than he ever would. Despite their relative status, he was but a bit player in her much more important life.
She let him go to voicemail and was about to stash her phone in her bag, when another notification lit up the screen. It was the security camera in her front yard. Could it be Zeno again? No, that didn’t make sense.
She opened it and was surprised to see herself. Or was it her double? Returned. The other woman waved, as if she knew Saskia would be watching. Then, evidently assuming she’d gotten Saskia’s attention, her double gave her a thumbs down signal. It was a prolonged gesture, as if to make sure Saskia took it in.
Was her double warning her? It was an ominous pantomime. But, if it was a warning, it made more sense that it was her future self than her double. Either way, as a harbinger of the dive she was about to make, it didn’t bode well.
Then, her digital twin righted her hand and formed a circle with her thumb and forefinger. The motion was smooth and deliberate. The way a diver hand-signals underwater.
Wait, the thumbs down gesture wasn’t a bad omen, it was the universal diving signal to indicate starting the dive. Her older self——she was sure now that it must be her older self——was letting her know that all was good.
Her double’s temporal displacement made her her own belay partner. It was an iron-clad guarantee that everything would be fine. In fact, just realizing it was herself, in one piece, later in her life, gave Saskia confidence. The hand signals were icing on the cake.
Emboldened, Saskia blew herself a kiss, stowed her phone again, and stuffed her backpack in the locker. She was ready to slip in time deep below the ocean’s surface.
∞
Mica stood in the control room. There was a steady hum of activity as coms and dive equipment were checked and rechecked, and she was content with being a fly on the wall. Her mind was still preoccupied with Zeno’s easy acquiescence. That he was now dead meant she’d never know what made him capitulate so easily, and yet it niggled at her.
“Has anyone got Zeno on the phone for final confirmation?” one of the Techs asked.
“Negative.”
The intercom squawked as Jeremy chimed in: “Ms. Pollack is clear. She knows what she’s doing. I’d like to rock this thing.”
A back and forth ensued before another Tech interjected with word that a giant swath of drift kelp was headed their way, likely freed from a storm last week. “Might not want to wait on Zeno.”
Sensing tension, Mica asked Gregory how serious the kelp issue was.
“Can tangle the umbilical, but they’ll encounter more down near the wellhead anyway,” Gregory said with a dismissive shake of his head. “Can be disorienting. Just ’nother thing to watch for. That, and the big critters that sometimes comes with it.”
“Critters?” Mica cocked her head.
“Worst case, is probably bull sharks near the surface.” He gave Mica a wink. “They can be a little testy.”
Jeremy’s com squawked again, “You guys seeing all this kelp? We’re ready to dive.”
The lead Tech turned to Mica. “Your gal OK with going now?”
Mica took a breath and nodded. “We need to get back to LA.” What had propelled her to push for this? Had she really ignored the risks because she’d had this romantic idea of diving being their thing together? Was Saskia now in real danger?
On the monitor, Mica watched as Saskia was lowered into the water.
The phone in her pocket dinged. Was that Saskia? It made no sense that it could be, but the irrational itch to check was irresistible, and she glanced at the notification. It was Dalton: “Call me. Zeno was ...”
Mica frowned and held her device up to open it. Apparently Zeno had been found in a swimming pool. Dalton’s contact in the LAPD had texted him. Zeno had been with a woman when he died. Wait, he’d died in water.
Mica’s eyes flicked to the monitors again, and sideways to Gregory, but he wasn’t interested in her social world. She fired a text back to Dalton: “Can’t talk now. Details?”
There was a flurry of activity by the monitors. The Techs reporting system functions and specs: “Depth reading at 90ft and descending steady.” “Tether tension all within parameters.” “ROV shows drifting kelp, diver, be advised.”
Dalton texted back. There had been some weird scarring under Zeno’s left eye. Scar tissue. The words echoed in Mica’s mind. They reminded her of Dallas, of the hospital there. Saskia had had scar tissue on her heart. Suddenly, she wondered: was it possible that Zeno knew about time travel?
She rejected the thought as soon as she had it, but . . . could that explain Zeno’s amenability?
Mica recalled Dalton’s earlier call. In that, he’d told her that Zeno had convulsed right before he died. The description——the witness’, the woman who’d been with Zeno——it echoed Saskia’s episode in Mica’s bed. When she’d been trying to turn time about and . . . Zeno had been in a pool. Saskia was in the water right now.
To nobody and everyone in the room, Mica asked: “How much denser is water than air?”
One of the Techs turned back to Mica, lifting his thumbs from his keyboard as he did. He glanced at the floor and back up to Mica. “A thousand times. Give or take. But the ADS suits, they have negative buoyancy. Why you asking?”
That was chapter 67, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it!
While today’s chapter was predicated on Saskia’s ability to move through time at different speeds in a very local sense, I’ve been thinking a bit lately about how we experience the passage of time differently as we grow older. Specifically, that time seems to slip by faster as we age.
I’ve noticed it gardening. That is, the time to see the fruits of your plantings feels quicker as the seasons pass, and, to add to the joy, seeing said growth feels more significant than it did when I was younger. Against that, is, of course, the unwelcome acknowledgement that there is less time left for you to see the plants you’ve planted grow. It’s not quite the adage that youth is wasted on the young, but it feels like a cousin. Whatever the case, I guess we can’t ask for everything.
Anyway, this juxtaposition makes for interesting considerations when selecting what to plant: the immediacy of a veggie patch versus the long arc to satisfaction that comes from planting a tree——a sequoia, for instance, planted now, will be barely adolescent before my time is up, and that’s assuming I’ve still got a best possible innings ahead of me. An orchard is, fortuitously, a nice middle ground. And already I’m getting a sense that ours is finding its feet, which means it’s been a few years since we committed the saplings to the ground. For my kids, it’s been a significant life investment, for me, it’s merely a thoughtful one. All of us, though, are eager for this years peaches, apricots and nectarines. Maybe even some Baby Crawford peaches from the scions I grafted on just over a year ago!
Here’s hoping that you too are being happily surprised by some seed you planted a while back.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
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