August, 1983 — Surrey, Engnd
Ed Martell was just finishing up a call.
“Thanks, Raymond. At least now we have confirmation.”
He pced the phone down and looked at his assembled research team. They were dispersed around the b again, but his mind still held the image of all of them, and Aric, positioned at the far end of the room, mugging for the camera. They’d settled down eventually, barely long enough for him to capture the annual group photo. The energy they’d exhibited then at their collected discovery had fled, almost at the same time Aric had closed the door behind him.
“Harvard confirms our findings. It’s some form of quantum entanglement.”
Carol had made the crucial discovery. But hearing Ed Martell confirm it still stunned her.
Carlos was the first to congratute her. He patted her on the back and smiled. “Well done.”
“Wow,” she said. “I can’t believe I was right.”
“Well I for one never doubted you,” Edith said as she pced her hand on her friend’s shoulder and smiled at her where she sat.
“It’s a brilliant piece of work,” Ed Martell agreed. “Now we know how he’s drawing so much energy.”
“But we still don’t know what it is or where it comes from,” Hank said.
“We know it behaves like inverted gravity,” Delphine said. “And except for the fact that it starts and stops whenever he does, it acts like a cssic Einstein-Rosen bridge would.”
Edith interrupted. “But the causal structure isn’t right, not how we expect it to be at least. It has characteristics of a fluid. And there’s a modution we can’t expin.”
“True,” Dr. Martell reminded them. “But I think Delphine’s right. It’s an ER bridge. But to where? What’s at the other end of this entanglement?”
Edith wasn’t giving up. “The modution is subtle, but it’s there —woven into the fabric of spacetime itself. Whatever’s at the other end, it’s immensely powerful.”
“Underneath spacetime,” Hank corrected her. “If they’re quantum particles he’s drawing on, then we’re talking about the framework on which spacetime is built.”
“It has to be a bck hole he’s connected to,” Alex added. “It fits. Very massive, and very distant.”
“It viotes the ws of bck hole thermodynamics,” Edith countered. “He’d have to breach the firewall.”
“Unless it’s the firewall he’s drawing on,” Dr. Martell said. He was only thinking out loud, but it was beginning to make sense. “A massive bck hole, surrounded by an equally massive firewall of high energy particles. The firewall itself could be his source of energy.”
“Could he be reaching through the firewall into the bck hole itself?” Hank asked. “Like a cssic ER bridge? Bypassing the firewall? Bypassing the event horizon?”
Everyone was silent. Motionless.
“Is that even possible?” Carlos asked.
Dr. Martell said what they were all thinking.
“In Aric’s case, anything is possible.”
Carol gnced at Edith, a knowing look in her eyes. She already knew where her friend would go once they left the b.
“Then we’d better be ready for whatever comes next.”
Delphine was in the small study room, wide fanfold printouts stained dark with coffee spread out before her, when Edith found her.
"Qui a écrit ce foutu programme, le Marquis de Sade?" she muttered,scribbling red ink across a page. Who wrote this goddamn program, the Marquis de Sade?
She looked up when Edith stepped in but immediately turned her eyes back to the paper in front of her.
God, I hate this, Edith thought.
She waited a moment. Delphine made no move to acknowledge her.
“Delphine, can we talk about this?”
"De quoi parler? Il t’a choisie. Félicitations.“What’s there to talk about? He chose you. Congratutions.
“What?”
Delphine held the pen like it was a lifeline, trying to summon back the anger that had nearly overwhelmed her when she’d first glimpsed the lines on Edith and Aric’s arms. But the rage had thinned, repced by something far worse—something quieter. A hollow, pulsing ache.
Not since she was sixteen had she wanted someone and not gotten them. Until now.
Edith stood behind her, motionless, helpless, as tears began to drip onto the paper. Red ink blurred and bled.
"Pourquoi pas moi? Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas chez moi?“Why not me? What’s wrong with me?
Edith was at her side in an instant. She knelt next to her and rubbed her shoulder gently as Delphine buried her face in her hands.
“Angel... I don’t understand.”
Delphine turned her head. Her eyes fell on Edith’s hand where it rested on her arm—the hand marked with fine dark lines.
Edith hadn’t been sure until now. Everyone in the b must have noticed once the weather turned warm and short sleeves became the norm. She’d considered hiding under long sleeves, but that might’ve looked like shame—and there was nothing about the marks she was ashamed of. To her, they were something sacred. Like matching wedding bands, even though she and Aric had barely kissed.
She’d seen Hank look away rather than acknowledge the lines—and what they meant. Carol had done the opposite—letting out a tiny, involuntary squeak when she noticed the matching patterns. But Delphine had only grown quiet. Her normally animated face turned into a still, unreadable mask.
“How long?” Delphine asked quietly.
“Since that afternoon on the roof. We both noticed them the next morning.”
“Six mois...” she murmured, shaking her head. “Did you exchange vows?”
Edith’s heart twisted. She had known Delphine was falling for him. And she still couldn’t believe that it wasn’t herself sitting there, sobbing, while this stunning, elegant woman knelt beside her, trying to offer comfort.
“It wasn’t like that. We didn’t pn it. He didn’t even know he could do it, not until that moment. The lines...I didn’t notice them until the next day.”
“So... if I had gone with him to the roof instead of you...?”
“I don’t know, love. Maybe.”
"Un c?ur faible ne gagne jamais...” she began, before trailing off and meeting Edith’s gaze. A faint heart wins nothing...
“I don’t want this to change things between us,” Edith said softly.
“I know you don’t,” Delphine replied. “But it does.”
Her mind was in too much turmoil to hear him approach. But the sound of his voice snapped her back to the moment.
“Can I walk with you to the bus stop?”
She looked up at him, and for a moment, she forgot the grief that had consumed her in recent days. But when her eyes drifted to the lines on his right arm, the ache returned. She gnced at them, then quickly looked away.
He had changed into a loose-fitting white linen shirt with no colr, open just enough to reveal the smooth skin of his chest. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows.
It was te. The warm, humid night air carried the scent of jasmine and vender. Overhead, a canopy of leaves darkened the sky, and their path was lit only by the soft yellow glow of occasional streetmps.
“Fais comme tu veux,” she said with a shrug, challenging him to understand. Do as you like.
They continued toward the illuminated street in the distance. Only a few weeks earlier, she would have been delighted at the idea of a quiet walk — time alone with the man who had stolen her heart. Now it felt like a cruel reminder of something she would never possess. A warmth that belonged to someone else.
They walked in silence. Her pace was slower than usual. In the b, everyone was accustomed to the rapid click of her heels down linoleum halls — her style more runway than research. Now she let Aric set the pace, and his steps were deliberate. When their shoulders brushed, she made no effort to move away.
“When I was fourteen, I began to change,” he said, beginning the story they all knew.
“I know,” she answered with a nod. “I read Dr. Martell’s interview with you.”
He nodded in return. “I know you did. But what you didn’t read was what I didn’t tell him.”
She gnced at his face. What she saw there nearly erased her own pain. She had seen him in discomfort before—mostly during tests—but this was different.
“You left something out?”
He chuckled softly. “I left a lot out.”
He paused, his gaze drifting forward.
“Afterward, it felt like someone else was walking around in my skin. I remember thinking, You’re not you anymore, Aric. You’re someone else now. So I waited — waited to see who I was becoming.”
They arrived at the bus stop. The bench was wide, but they sat close. The smell of car exhaust and the hum of engine noise filled the space around them.
They had spoken more times than she could count, and she treasured every conversation. But this felt different.
“Then you joined the army,” she said, “thinking you’d find yourself there?”
“Yes. Like any normal, confused eighteen-year-old.”
“But you weren’t normal.”
“Correct. And back then, I had no skill in hiding it. The army taught me that at least. But it took a while.”
“Comme un Beau Geste moderne,” she said thoughtfully. A modern-day Beau Geste.
He nodded, eyes unfocused. “It was more than just not knowing who I was. I felt like a puppet. Like the universe had handed me a set of instruments, but not the manual on how to use them. It’s like I’ve been carrying around a heavy toolbox ever since—waiting for someone to show me what to build.”
When the bus arrived, she stood. Aric stood too — but to her surprise, he boarded before she did. She followed just as the doors closed behind them.
“This isn’t your bus,” she said as she sat beside him.
“I know,” he said.
“You’re going in the wrong direction.”
He shook his head slightly. “No. I’m with you. Which, right now, is the right direction.”
Her heart skipped at that. The fragile ember of hope that had refused to die kindled in her chest again.
It took her a moment to find the courage to ask.
“Do you think it’s possible to give your heart to someone... and still have room for someone else?”
He smiled gently, and her breath caught. “I believe it’s possible to care deeply for more than one person. Absolutely.”
“You know what I’m asking.”
He reached out and took her hand, carefully. Like it might break if he held too tightly.
“You and Edith—you both took me in. You saw me. You gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time—real connection. With your kindness, your strength, your wit. And yes—with your beauty.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t look away. She had imagined hearing these words. She’d never imagined what they would feel like when spoken aloud.
“But my connection with Edith, that’s something neither one of us pnned. It wasn’t a conscious choice I made. Between you and Edith. Something bigger than all of us ordained that. Maybe right when we three met, or thirteen billion years ago—just as the universe was forming.”
He paused for a moment before continuing.
“I used to think I was trying to find myself, but now I believe I was following an invisible thread. Wherever it led. If it had led me to you, Delphine, I would’ve felt just as blessed. Truly. But it didn’t. It led me to Edith.
You know I care for you. But what I feel for Edith—that connection—it’s the most right thing I’ve felt since I was fourteen. And my heart only has room for one connection like that.”
He didn’t owe her that much honesty, but he gave it freely. And in that, she found comfort, if not peace. The ache remained. It always would. But it hurt a little less now.
She turned to the window and looked past her own reflection to the night outside. Aric still held her hand, gently—not in promise, but in kindness. The way Edith might have done.
She would follow his example. She would wait and see who she became, in time. Her journey would be more ordinary than his—but still her own.
Her building appeared. As the bus slowed, she rose. Aric stood with her, but made no move to follow. They looked at each other for a moment. Then she smiled and turned to leave.
The doors hissed shut behind her, and the bus pulled away. Through the window, she saw him still seated, facing forward, his gaze steady.
The distance between them widened, but the pce he held in her heart remained untouched. His words had softened the sting, brightened the pleasure of knowing him — even as they dimmed the hope of something more. She would see him again tomorrow. And she would still feel the same. Joy, and ache, bound up together.
