November, 1983 — Surrey, Engnd

  Someone had drawn a smiling dolphin next to Delphinus at the top of the poster using colored pencils. Someone else had taped a picture of Delphine from Vogue on the upper right corner and circled it with a red heart. Ed Martell had taped on a cartoon someone had drawn of him in full kit whacking a cricket ball.

  And those were only the most recent additions.

  Carol had applied a Boston Red Sox logo that she had cut out of a score card next to the smiley face after her name.

  Hank had done the same thing by cutting up the cover of a magazine from The Wellington Lions.

  Delphine had applied a kiss in dark red lipstick next to Aric’s name. Red had also been the color Edith had seen at first gnce, but the emotion faded quickly. She liked Delphine, so if it made her happy to kiss a rge piece of paper that was curling at the edges, Edith could be generous. Besides, Delphine appeared to have a secret admirer in the group, though by process of elimination it was most probably Alex.

  Unless Hank has finally taken the hint, she thought hopefully.

  Aric had still not contributed anything. He would look at the poster, scanning for anything new. He would ugh at the witticisms that Hank or Alex scribbled on a clean section. But that was all.

  They had only been together for two months when Aric first arrived. Still just seven individuals at that point. Brilliant, sure. Gifted, absolutely. But still isnds in a calm sea.

  Or remote satellites, drifting solitarily through space, she thought as she looked at the poster that was coming more to life with each passing week. Waiting for gravity to draw us together.

  In the beginning none of them had any real experience working as part of a team. They were fresh from their PhDs—brilliant, isoted, and fiercely protective of their research. Colboration wasn’t instinctive; it was an adjustment. It had been the turbulent waters, or maybe the gravity, that accompanied Aric which forced them together. Sink or swim. And in the process, Aric found his pce among them—and in the rger world.

  From day one, he was used to working as part of a team. Used to leading one, in ways the rest of them couldn’t yet understand. The Army had taught him that, along with many other things. But he wasn’t their leader. He was their test subject. He was the glue that held their ship together—but he wasn’t the captain. Someone else was deciding where the ship would go.

  And he was fine with that. He didn’t need to be in charge. All he wanted was to be part of a team. Their team. And without ever intending it, that desire had rubbed off on them.

  Team work, Edith thought as she looked at the sticker of a cartoon turkey that Carol had found somewhere and stuck to the poster, with the words TURKEY DAY written over it with Saturday, November 26th! written next to it.

  It wouldn’t be a real Thanksgiving dinner, not according to Carol and Aric. That happened on the fourth Thursday of November by American tradition. Their celebration would be on the Saturday that followed. The pair had commandeered Dr. Martell’s kitchen—and most of his refrigerator, small as it was, and sparsely poputed.

  “Can we fit everything in here?” Carol asked, eyeing the cramped appliance.

  “It’s not like we need a twenty-pound turkey,” Aric replied. “If we could even find one. But you’re right—this thing’s going to be packed tight by Saturday morning.”

  Carol took inventory. It didn’t take long.

  “One takeout container of leftover chicken tikka masa from Sher-e-Punjab. One half-eaten Jolly Posh steak and kidney pie.”

  Aric continued the inventory. “A chunk of ham he uses for sandwiches. And its mating chunk of cheese.”

  Carol made a face. “Is it supposed to look like that?”

  “I’m not sure anything meant for human consumption is supposed to look like that.”

  “He must scrape off the disgusting bits before—Christ, this thing’s going in the trash.”

  Aric grinned. “They call it the bin on this side of the pond.”

  “Whatever. It’s growing a brain. It either sits for exams or out it goes.”

  There wasn’t much else. A dish of butter with ridges carved into it from repeated attempts to spread it before it had softened. A carton of eggs with a solitary soldier still standing guard.

  “Is this butter made out of titanium?” Carol asked, poking it. “It’s harder than my thesis defense.”

  “The milk’s fresh, at least,” Aric said after giving it a cautious sniff. “At least we don’t have to relocate a bunch of stuff.”

  “How the hell does he survive? Tea? Takeout Indian? Frozen pies? A celr full of beer?”

  “I’d have brought him a couple of cases of C-Rations if I’d known.”

  The two Americans ughed, but the truth was—they were enjoying themselves. They were used to being strangers in a strange nd. This would be a taste of home. A reminder of the lives they’d left behind—and, at least for Carol, the life that was waiting when she returned.

  Aric still didn’t know what life had in store for him. It wasn’t that his future held too many possibilities—it was that he couldn’t see it at all. Like staring at a tinted window at midnight. All he could see was his own reflection, etched in whatever dim light surrounded him. He could create light out of nothing—enough to illuminate all of Surrey—but not enough to reveal what y ahead.

  But that was a problem for another time.

  For now, they had a Thanksgiving feast to pn and execute. And that simple task brought Aric more joy than he was ready to admit.

  A short distance from the house in Guildford, two women were talking over tea.

  Edith and Delphine should not be friends. More accurately… no, that statement was pretty on the nose.

  It wasn’t common, in most of the world, for two women who loved the same man to be friends. Both women—the one who had the man’s affection, and the one who desired it—had reason not to like the other. Neither reason trumped the other. Delphine had once ughed as she described her grandfather’s funeral—his wife and his mistress sitting side by side, mourning together, supporting each other in their grief. But in that case, both women had gotten what they wanted. At least a portion of it. Aric liked Delphine. She knew that. He was fond of her.

  But what he felt for Edith went farther than that. She only had to look at her own arm—what part of it she could see—to be reminded.

  “You don’t need my permission,” Edith replied. She didn’t like the idea of Delphine stealing him away, even for a few days, but it wasn’t her pce to object. Aric knew his own mind, and his own heart. She wasn’t the gatekeeper for either.

  “It would only be a few days,” Delphine had expined when she asked if Aric could accompany her to Min for Fashion Week. “Just to arrive with me, sit through the show, and then the receptions afterward. Otherwise I’ll have buyers, billionaires, and bloated politicians pawing me all night.”

  It was what the two of them did for Aric—only reversed. They kept the more forward (hornier) women at bay when their exclusive group of friends/researchers spent a night on the town. Edith’s initial jealousy at Delphine’s request had faded quickly, crushed under the weight of fairness. Delphine had protected Aric just as much as she had.

  “I know I don’t need it. But I want your blessing anyway. I know how close you two are. I know you pnned to spend the holiday together.”

  “You and Aric are close too. I’m not blind to that. I don’t have any more right to him than you do.”

  “It’s kind of you to say. Even if it’s not true.”

  It was true, as far as it went. She and Aric had never talked about it—not really. There was no understanding between them, as people used to say a hundred years ago. They’d only kissed once, for Christ’s sake. Sure, she’d told him she loved him. But he’d never said it back. She didn’t call him her boyfriend. Still wasn’t sure what would happen if they ever started a real retionship. Would she still have a pce on the project? Or would Dr. Martell thank her for her service and show her the door—gently, regretfully—expining that Aric’s paramour couldn’t be part of a very important, and most likely very illegal, research team?

  But still—they were a trio.

  She didn’t need Aric’s gift to feel it.

  When the two of them were alone, the rest of the universe faded. If it existed at all, it was just a painted backdrop in some py. They stood before it, untouched. But when Delphine was with them… she wasn’t an intrusion. She was there—different, distinct—but woven into the fabric of it. A different energy, yes, but not unwelcome. Not disruptive. Just part of it.

  And it wasn’t Delphine’s doing. Edith knew that. She wasn’t responsible for the bond. She didn’t wield that kind of power. None of them did.

  Only Aric.

  It was Aric who had drawn them all together—the team, the b, the project. But this? This was something smaller. Something intimate. A fire shared by three souls who, for reasons none of them fully understood, had found warmth in each other’s light.

  And for that reason alone—for what Aric felt—Edith felt a special affection for the Parisian.

  She might have felt it for Alex, if he’d been the one instead. It wasn’t anything Delphine had done—it was something Aric had built between them. An emotional bridge across which she and Delphine could meet, could see each other more clearly. And she liked what she saw.

  But that affection came with a tension. She could feel Aric’s attachment to Delphine, and couldn’t help falling back on the old zero-sum math: that his love was finite, that what he gave to one of them diminished what he had left for the other. She was wrong, of course. She knew that deep down.

  Love—Aric’s or anyone’s—wasn’t a pie to be sliced and rationed. It was the sky.

  December 16, 1983 — Surrey, Engnd

  The Christmas tree was a celebration of color and light. Everyone had contributed something, much like the Delphinus poster, which now sported a full border of thumb tacks to hold its curling edges ft. Edith was fairly certain the over-decorated Fraser fir was defying the ws of physics by staying upright under so much weight.

  It was their st day together before Christmas break would scatter them like leaves blown across the globe. Their party the night before had gone well into the early hours, and a few faces in the b looked appropriately ragged. Dr. Martell had anticipated a light day—wrapping up loose ends, rechecking a few anomalous results, polishing the draft of a paper destined for Physical Review Letters.

  But as the morning wore on, the day became anything but light.

  “What’s happening?” Carol asked as the chart recorder tracking the local background began to fluctuate wildly. Red ink scratched chaotic lines across the paper roll.

  “Electrical noise? Somebody using the new microwave?” Alex guessed.

  All of them were watching the erratic red line when Aric spoke from behind them. His voice sounded... wrong. Strained. Pained.

  “I need to leave.”

  Oh my God, Edith thought.

  He was nearly doubled over. He looked awful.

  “I need to leave,” he repeated. “I need to get outside.”

  No one moved. They were frozen in pce—uncertain, unnerved. None of them had ever seen him like this.

  “Someone help me outside!” Aric shouted, before colpsing with a cry.

  “ARIC!” Edith screamed, running toward him.

  “Aaah! Aaaaahhhh!”

  The sound was being ripped from him.

  The air began to hum. And then came the burning—first a faint smell, then stronger. Aric’s screams blended with something else. A low, rumbling sound, like an avanche echoing through solid stone.

  And then came the light.

  It came fast, engulfing him in a sphere of radiant energy. Eyes squinted, hands shielded. He disappeared inside it.

  Edith was sure she was watching the man she loved die.

  Her world narrowed to grief. Her heart stuttered in her chest as the sphere began to pulse—waves of energy radiating outward, like the beat of some celestial heart. The waves struck the walls of the b, and everything began to vibrate, like a plucked string stretched to its limit. Edith felt them pass through her—deep, resonant, almost tender. Not violent, not harmful.

  But she knew, even in that moment, that something inside her had changed.

  Monitors spiked. Heart rates climbed. No one moved.

  They all felt it—something passing through them. Not just sound or vibration, but a presence. It lingered just beneath the surface, impossible to expin, and more impossible to deny.

  But then the smell began to change. The scent was familiar—Russian Gardenia, the same incense from Saint Thomas of Canterbury, where they’d sat side by side during Sunday Mass. Sacred and strange. A memory in smoke.

  The sound changed, too. His screams were gone—repced by music. The same music she remembered from the roof. The light began to shift, to shape itself. The globe of energy coalesced into a human form, suspended above the floor.

  "Mon Dieu," Delphine whispered.

  It was still Aric.

  Suspended midair, glowing, his arms slightly away from his body, palms open. His legs floated loosely beneath him, like someone drifting in still water.

  The intense glow had receded—what remained were pearls and tendrils of violet light trailing from his form, drifting like bioluminescent petals on an unseen breeze.

  His body still glowed, but his pain was gone. His face was calm. She watched his chest expand as he breathed deeply, rhythmically.

  When he smiled at Edith, the knot in her chest unwound. The weight lifted.

  He was alive. She wasn’t going to lose him—not today.

  She could breathe again.

  I owe all of you an expnation, his voice said—not aloud, but in her mind.

  And in theirs, she was certain.

  Relief poured out of her like a flood. She knew he could feel it. And in response, she felt his love return—a steady and radiant stream—filling the hollow space she’d just emptied.

  I’m sorry. It’s my fault you had to see that. I apologize.

  When he switched to spoken words, they still echoed strangely. A faint dey, a second voice yered beneath his own.

  In my mind and in my ears, Edith realized.

  “I’ll expin everything ter. But right now, I need to be somewhere else. Somewhere private. Somewhere safe.”

  It wasn’t surprising that Delphine was the first to speak.

  “Mais tu reviendras, n’est-ce pas? Tu reviens vers nous?” she asked. Her voice was quiet. Barely a whisper. None of them were fluent in French, but all of them understood her plea. Her words, transcribed in their minds by Aric’s gift, echoed in each of them like the nguage of Adam—not heard, but known. But you’re coming back, right? You’re coming back to us?

  Aric began to drift backward. He nodded, smiling gently. He spoke one st time before passing through the wall, and out of sight.

  “I’m coming back. When it’s safe.”

  February 6th, 1984 — Surrey, Engnd

  It had been fifty-two days since any of them had seen Aric. Since he’d—none of them were entirely sure what to call it. “Departed” didn’t seem right. Neither did “vanished.” Their instruments, even those aimed at deep space, had recorded the event. In that blinding, sixty-five-second burst, they’d collected more data than in the entire span since Aric’s arrival.

  It was the only thing even remotely resembling a silver lining in the cloud that still hung over the b. At least they had something to analyze. Something measurable. Something to focus on. She should have been thrilled—objectively, the research was progressing. But Edith felt nothing.

  The holiday had been a long ordeal of waiting and silent disappointment. They’d pnned to spend it together. To get to know each other outside the b, outside their roles as researcher and subject. As people. Her mum had taken to Aric instantly, and her sister adored him. Her dad had given the ultimate in reluctant paternal praise—a single, skeptical Hmmph—which, considering his disdain for all her previous boyfriends, may as well have been a standing ovation.

  But Aric never returned.

  She returned to Fulham alone, and the moment she stepped inside, she broke down. Everyone assumed the retionship had ended. She couldn’t bring herself to correct them. Couldn’t tell them the truth. She just said something had happened, that he’d had to leave, and that she didn’t know when—or if—he’d return. She let them draw their own conclusions.

  Fifty-two days.

  Twenty-nine days since they’d returned to campus. To work. To normal. All of them except Aric. He was still gone. But not forgotten.

  On the first day back, Dr. Martell called her into his office. She thought it was to discuss the Christmas tree that no one had taken down yet—not out of sentiment, but because it had grown more than a foot in their absence.

  No one could expin how, but every day they returned to the b, the evidence stared them in the face with ever-expanding branches.

  Alex had been tracking the tree’s non-linear growth and estimated an average of 1.45 centimeters per day, which was slowing. He predicted it would stop entirely by spring.

  “It’s not going to fit through the door much longer,” he remarked, stepping back with his clipboard.

  “We can’t cut it up,” Carol replied, horrified. “It’s alive.”

  “It was alive before someone cut it down,” Hank muttered.

  “I’m never buying a real Christmas tree again,” Carol said, staring at the branches like she would a kitten.

  “Don’t give it a name,” Alex warned her, “it only makes it harder when you have to get rid of it.”

  “Maybe we should ask someone from the Biology department?” Hank suggested as he reached in to retrieve his prize ornament, now buried somewhere in the tree’s interior.

  “And when they ask what we’re doing here?” Alex said, without looking up. He watched the perfect moment to boast about his credentials float by—giving it a polite wave as it passed.

  Hank thought about it for ten seconds. “OK. No Biology department.”

  All the lights and ornaments had been stripped away. What remained was a tree—too tall for the ceiling now, its topmost branch brushing against the tiles. Still, no one could bring themselves to remove it.

  Edith stood beside it, fingers lightly grazing the bark, as though listening. She wasn’t sure why. The tree shouldn’t be growing. It shouldn’t be alive. But something about it pulsed—quietly, stubbornly—with life.

  Delphine joined her in silence, shoulder to shoulder. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

  The tree reminded them of Aric.

  Neither of them could expin it—not yet. But the feeling was there, rooted and wordless. Something about the impossible life of it made them think of him.

  Not hope. Not memory.

  Presence.

  Where are you? Edith wondered, directing her thoughts not to the tree, but through it—through its improbable life, toward the one person who might have given it.

  Are you ever coming back?

  “I need you to enter something into the research log for me.” Ed Martell said when she had closed the door and sat down.

  “I’d do it myself,” he added, “but it’s about me. And I can’t be both researcher and subject.”

  Edith frowned. “Why are you the subject?” The log was meant strictly for data reted to Aric—and his abilities.

  “I had prostate cancer,” Martell said. “I never told anyone. I was monitoring it. Physical symptoms, blood tests. I was part of a trial—experimental diagnostics.”

  Edith felt her breath catch. They had all been surprised—shocked—upon returning to the b, and to an Edward Martell that looked, not just rested, physically younger. Healthier. None of them could have guessed what burden he’d been privately carrying.

  Her instinct was to offer him sympathy—some expression of shock or sorrow—but one word caught in her mind like a hook.

  “You had prostate cancer?”

  He nodded. “I saw my urologist over the break. It’s gone. The symptoms. The antigen markers. Everything they’d been tracking—it’s like the cancer was never there.”

  She stared at him.

  He wants me to record that his cancer has vanished. In the research log about Aric, and his abilities.

  It took her a moment to catch up to what he was implying.

  “The waves,” she said quietly. “The energy that flooded the b.”

  Martell nodded. ”Idiopathic remission. That’s what my doctor called it. Sound familiar? Of course, I couldn’t offer him my own diagnosis. There’s no ICD-9 code for Cured by Demigod."

  Her mind was still reeling.

  I was there. I was closest to him. It passed right through me.

  “Edith?”

  His voice brought her back.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “What were you saying?”

  “You need to document what I’ve told you. Then we need to interview the others. See if anyone else has been… affected by what happened.”

  She still felt like she was dreaming. “Right. I’ll get the log book, and we can go through it.”

  “Good. Then we’ll switch roles, and I’ll interview you.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  A pause. Then, as he leaned back in his chair:

  “Oh, by the way… happy birthday.”

  “What?” She blinked. “God, it slipped my mind. You’re right—it is my birthday.”

  The interviews were completed. The log was updated.

  No one else had anything to report.

  Edith hadn’t expected there to be. Aside from Dr. Martell, they were all young and healthy—or so they believed. Carol had broken her colrbone. It hadn’t dispced much and had healed quickly. She never compined about it, and it didn’t seem to trouble her now. But at Dr. Martell’s request, she agreed to have an X-ray taken. He wanted to see if the old break was still visible.

  But it was Delphine who shook her the most.

  Edith found her in one of the private study rooms, sitting alone with her face buried in her hands. She was crying.

  “Hey,” Edith said softly, kneeling beside her. “What’s this? What’s wrong?”

  Delphine didn’t answer. She only shook her head, fingers clutching her face. Edith didn’t need Aric’s gifts to understand what she was feeling. She reached up and gently pced a hand on Delphine’s knee.

  “I know, angel,” she said. “I miss him too.”

  Even Hank was subdued. That surprised her more than anything Dr. Martell had told her. She caught herself wondering, briefly, if Aric had done something to him—then immediately felt foolish.

  Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

  But maybe it wasn’t so foolish. Who’s to say what kind of healing each of them might need? Some had cancer. Some had broken bones. And some… carried wounds no scan could detect. Years of damage. Old griefs buried beneath yers of bravado or silence.

  She realized that she had no idea what truly limited Aric’s abilities. Were they bound by physics? By ethics? By will? Was he capable of anything his mind could imagine?

  Fifty-two days ago, she could’ve asked him.

  She could have asked him other things, too.

  Where do you see yourself in the future?

  Do I have a pce in it?

  Will you marry me?

  But questions like that felt pointless now.

  There was no one here to answer them.

  Not the important ones.

  For the others—the ones their research team had been funded to explore—there was data.

  A significant amount of it.

  Waiting.

  Edith’s ft on Dapdune Road had just under 900 square feet of living space. It was cozy, and the couple next door were quiet and friendly. They reminded Edith of her grandparents. Her mum’s parents.

  Her mum had taken to calling every evening at 7 to ask if Aric had returned. This evening Carol was out with Carlos while Edith sat alone and waited for the phone to ring.

  Happy 27th birthday to me, she thought as she stared at the phone and wondered if Aric would ever return. If whatever had happened in the b had separated them forever.

  The bleak thought had barely formed in her mind when she felt it.

  The humming.

  Her mind raced ahead of her feet as she traversed the short distance from the sitting room to the door.

  GOD. Please, God. Sweet, merciful, bountiful, Lord, please...

  He stood outside in the frigid weather wearing nothing more than a dress shirt and scks. In his hand was a small gift-wrapped box.

  He looked exactly the same.

  “Hi,” he said shyly as he presented the box to her. “Happy Birthday.”

  She left the door open. The light rushed out, and so did her relief — so strong it felt like it filled the night, surrounding them as she threw herself into his arms.

  Later...

  “I was starting to think that you were never coming back,” she whispered.

  “You shouldn’t have worried,” he murmured, his fingers gently trailing across the bare skin of her back. “I left my heart here. I was very happy to find it hadn’t run off while I was away.”

  Edith breathed in deep and let it out slowly, her head rising and falling with the rhythm of his chest. Their clothes y tangled on the floor beside the bed, a monument to the hour of desperate lovemaking that had burned away every st ounce of her fear.

  Now she floated in a sea of serenity, her limbs entangled with his, their skin damp and warm, her soul finally at rest.

  How much life can change in an hour, she thought.

  “You know,” Aric said zily, “you haven’t opened your present yet.”

  Edith raised her head and kissed his lips. “You’re the only thing I want for my birthday.” Another kiss. “And Christmas.”

  He kissed her back with a grin. “So… should I return it?”

  She caught his lower lip gently in her teeth. “Don’t you dare.”

  He responded by tickling her sides, sending her into peals of ughter.

  “OOOH! Don’t you DARE! DON’T YOU DARE!”

  Which was, of course, the moment Carol and Carlos walked in.

  “What’s going on in there!? Edith? Are you okay?”

  “I’m FINE!” she yelped, still ughing as Aric’s fingers found her ribs again.

  “She is much more than fine,” Aric called out cheerfully. “She’s exquisite.”

  Carol broke into a wide smile at the sound of his voice. She turned to Carlos, who let out a satisfied sigh.

  “Gràcies a Déu, i ja era hora també,” he said. Thank God. And about time, too.

  Carol felt the weight lift from her chest, repced by something light and blissful.

  “Happy Birthday!” she shouted, full of unbridled joy.