Fast-Time at Aldmont High (The Time Flow Stories Book 1) Page 2

  are cute.”

  Jesse rolled his eyes. “At least I’ve gone out with a few girls, DimWitt.”

  “Yeah, monkey girls.”

  Jesse kept after him about what’d happened on the stairs, and Witt continued to fend him off with various half-assed insults until they split to go to their respective homes. As they went their different ways, Jesse called out, “My vision’s fine and so’s my stubbornness. I’m gonna keep after you till you spill.”

  This’s gonna be annoying, Witt thought, waving dismissively at his friend and continuing on his way.

  ***

  Once home, Witt forced himself to do his studying and practice his saxophone first. He knew, once he started experimenting, he’d keep putting off his homework until it’d gotten past time to go to sleep.

  He managed to work straight through on his studies with only one stop to wonder if he could study in fast-time and still have plenty of time afterward for experiments. He decided that, since he would’ve lived through that time, he’d probably be just as tired as if he stayed up late. He finished what he’d planned to work on just before his mother called Witt and his sister for dinner.

  When he got to the kitchen, his mom seemed distracted and worried. Witt considered asking her about it but didn’t want her unloading on him.

  Claire came in before he could decide whether or not to say anything. Plopping down in her chair, she faced their mom, “All my clothes are horrible. You’ve got to get me some better things!”

  Their mom gave a tired sigh, “Now’s not a good time, Claire.”

  “It’s never a good time, is it, Lindsey?” Claire asked in a sarcastic tone, using her mother’s first name because their mom didn’t like it.

  Mom, a plate in each hand, stopped between the stove and the table, closing her eyes and, Witt suddenly realized, looking miserable. She looks like she’s going to cry! he thought. A moment later she set the plates down in front of her children and walked out of the kitchen.

  Witt stared after her a moment, worry constricting his throat. He glanced down at his plate. Rice and beans again, he thought. His mother’d been serving variations of the meal more frequently of late. He’d asked her if she was trying to turn them into vegetarians and she’d given a little laugh, saying that knowing how to eat vegetarian was a good life skill. Then she’d launched into a mini-lecture about how grains and legumes—beans—combined to make a complete protein which was very important to understand if you weren’t going to eat meat.

  At the time he’d been annoyed, thinking that he wasn’t planning to go veggie. Now, regarding his plate with a jaundiced eye, he wondered whether they were eating rice and beans to save money.

  Claire, apparently oblivious to the concerns rising in Witt’s mind, shouted after her mom, “Ducking the issue of my clothes isn’t going to make the problem go away, you know. Are you happy your daughter’s an outcast?! Are you ever going to do anything about it?! Do you even care?!”

  “Claire,” Witt began, though talking to his sister always turned into a disaster, “Mom seems pretty upset. Maybe you should cut her some slack.”

  Claire had just put a spoonful of food in her mouth. She looked up at Witt as she chewed, loathing in her eyes. She swallowed and said, “That’s right, you sniveling momma’s boy, take her side. I’ve been cutting her slack for months. Has it done any good? No!”

  “I think she’s worried about money. She hardly ever feeds us meat anym—”

  Claire interrupted by slamming her fist on the table, “That’s such bullshit! Dad sends her a load of child support every frickin’ month. Is she spending that on you? ’Cause, she’s sure as hell not spending it on me!”

  “But there’re a lot of other expenses—”

  Standing so suddenly it slammed her chair back against the wall, Claire hissed, “That’s bullshit, momma’s boy, and you know it!” Curling her lip disgustedly, she picked up her plate, “I can’t stand being around you, so I’m gonna go eat in my room.” She turned and stalked out of the kitchen.

  Witt gaped after her. He’d heard his uncles complaining about how bitchy teenage girls could be. Is this a normal amount of bitchy? he wondered. Or not bad and it could get even worse?

  He didn’t feel hungry after all the vitriol, but knew he’d be starving later if he didn’t eat, so he shoveled in his rice and beans, still worrying about his mom. By the time he put the last spoonful in his mouth, he’d convinced himself there was nothing he could do. However, when he took his plate to the sink, he saw the plate his mom had made for herself sitting next to the stove. The least I could do is take her food to her, he thought rinsing his plate and leaving it in the sink.

  Picking up his mom’s plate, he grabbed her fork off the table and left the kitchen himself.

  Entering the small living area of their apartment, he started across, intending to go to his mother’s room where he thought she’d be. Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned to look.

  His mother was sitting on the end of their couch in the dark.

  “Mom?” he asked, but she didn’t respond. He walked over and sat down beside her, “Um, I brought your plate.”

  “Thanks, Witt,” she said listlessly. “Just set it on the coffee table.”

  “Aren’t you gonna eat?”

  She shrugged, “In a minute… When I get hungry. I don’t think I could choke it down right now.”

  “Um, you seem upset. I mean more than I’d expect from the way, uh, Claire’s been acting like such a…” He trailed off, deciding that calling his sister a “bitch” would just be one more problem for his mother to deal with.

  His mother nodded but said nothing.

  “Uh… what else’s the matter?”

  She gave a forced-sounding chuckle. “Claire thinks she’s unhappy now…?” After the little pause, her voice faint, she continued, “Wait’ll she finds out we’re gonna have to move to a smaller apartment.”

  “Smaller?” Witt asked, thinking their apartment was already embarrassingly tiny and wondering how they could possibly fit into a smaller one. “Um, why?”

  His mother gave a tiny shrug. “’Cause, we can’t afford this one…” She trailed off, then her shoulders gave a little jump. Witt suddenly realized it was a sob. Her voice raspy, she said, “Just like we can’t afford nice clothes for Claire.”

  Witt frowned, “Did you lose your job?”

  She shook her head. “But it doesn’t pay very well.”

  “Oh,” Witt said, stunned. His mom seemed really smart, so he’d always thought her job at Barnes and Goforth had to be a good one. Now he realized he didn’t even know what she did there. Now’s not the time to ask, he decided. “Have you applied… or whatever… for a promotion or something like that?”

  She nodded slowly. “And I’ve applied for better jobs at a bunch of other places. No luck so far.” She squared her shoulders, “I’m sure something’s going to come through, but right now we’re out of money…” she cleared her throat, “Actually, we’re in quite a bit of debt.”

  “Can’t we ask Dad for some extra money to carry us over till you get a better job?”

  Giving a bitter laugh, his mom said, “We wouldn’t be in this fix if your dad was making his child support payments.”

  Gut clenching, Witt said, “He’s not?!”

  A shake of her head. “Stopped about eight months ago.”

  “But can’t the police or somebody force him to make payments?”

  “You can’t get blood out of a turnip. He got fired. He’s asking me for money!”

  “Oh,” Witt said, feeling like his world was crumbling around him. Hesitantly, he asked, “Have you found a place?”

  His mom nodded unhappily.

  “When are we moving?”

  “This weekend.”

  Oh… shit! Witt thought. And Claire doesn’t even know! After a puzzled minute, he said, “Um, how can it be smaller than this one? We each only have one bedroom here, so, u
m… I thought apartment sizes mostly went by how many bedrooms they have?”

  “We’re getting a one-bedroom. Claire and I’ll share the bedroom.” She looked at Witt, “You’ll sleep on the couch.” She must’ve seen the horror in his eyes because she said, “It’ll only be temporary.”

  Feeling like he was in some kind of nightmare, Witt said, “When are you gonna tell Claire?”

  Firming her chin, his mom said, “When the time seems right… It’ll probably never be right but… I’ll have to figure something out. Unless you want to tell her?”

  Witt recoiled, “Oh, hell no!”

  His mom studied him a moment. “I might just slip a note under her door. Think she’ll read it?”

  She won’t, Witt realized. “Don’t fold it and put it under face up. Write, ‘We’re moving,’ at the top. She’ll read it to find out what you’re talking about.”

  “Good idea. I’m meeting someone about a job before work tomorrow, so you guys’ll be on your own for getting up and making your breakfast. That means you’ll have to deal with Claire’s tantrum when she reads the note, okay?”

  No! No, no, no, no! Witt thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud when his mother looked like she was about to crumble. “What should I tell her when she’s, um, going batshit on me?”

  His mother shrugged, “I don’t know. From the way she and I’ve been getting along, you know I haven’t figured out to deal with her. I think the truth’s the best, no sugarcoating things. But it’s still gonna go badly.”

  Witt sat staring at her until she said, “Thanks for bringing my dinner. It’s nice to feel like I’ve got someone on my side in this.”

  He nodded, his mind a million miles away.

  “You should go study,” she said. “Good grades’ll help you get jobs that’ll keep you out of financial shitholes like this one.

  Witt slowly got up and headed to his room. He stopped just inside the door. Could I make money with my new talent? he wondered. Jesse’d say to use fast-time to walk into a bank vault, fill a bag with money and walk back out… But I’m not doing that. He frowned, Besides, that’d depend on them leaving the vault door standing open during business hours. I’ll bet that only happens in the movies.

  After thinking for a few minutes without coming up with anything lucrative, he realized, I need to know a whole lot more about how it—my talent?—works and what it can do before I have any chance of turning it into cash.

  Author’s note:

  The next few pages detail the experiments Witt performs to help him understand the science of how his fast-time world works. If you find this kind of stuff boring you can skip ahead to the bold-faced summary of what he learns (which falls at the beginning of Chapter Two).

  Sitting down, he pulled out his phone and pulled up its stopwatch app. Opening his laptop, he found a similar stopwatch app on it.

  As he was about to try to activate both stopwatches simultaneously, he paused, thinking, This’s ridiculous. If I can go so fast it pauses time for the rest of the world, both the phone and the laptop are going to stop. He shrugged, And…, that’s why scientists do experiments. To see if what they think is true actually is.

  He tapped the start icon on both devices as simultaneously as he could. When he held the phone’s screen up next to the watch app on the laptop, he was pleased to see that, as best he could, tell they were registering the seconds simultaneously. Both of them were also registering hundredths of a second digits, but he couldn’t tell whether they were simultaneous because they were ticking by too rapidly to read them.

  After a moment, he did what he’d done when he’d sped his time previously. The room went dark, but to his surprise, the phone in his hand remained bright. The stopwatch on the phone kept going—the hundredths of a second numbers changing so rapidly he only caught a number occasionally—the stopwatch on the laptop had disappeared because the laptop’s screen was dark like the rest of the room. He was wondering whether the phone kept his time because it was in contact with him, but got distracted when he noticed the laptop’s keyboard was dimly visible where his phone’s screen lit it. He turned his phone toward the laptop’s screen in hopes of seeing the computer’s stopwatch app displayed there but only saw a mirror-like reflection of the phone’s light from the glass of the laptop’s screen.

  What the hell? he wondered. Why’s everything dark just because my time’s fast? I need Jesse to tell me if it’s dark out there in the world when I’m in fast-time. He blinked a couple of times, Though, if the rest of the world goes dark when I speed up—or the world slows down, or whatever you want to call it—then surely someone would’ve mentioned that happening when I dodged Bear’s fist.

  Is this darkness an all or nothing phenomenon? he wondered. He eased off his time-speeding somewhat. When nothing happened, he kept easing. Sure enough, when he felt like he’d mostly released the pressure he’d been putting on the passage of time, the world started to light up, dim red colors appearing first, and then… Damn! Even my violet school pen’s red! He remembered the violet panels of Bear’s letter jacket had been red when the big footballer was flying down the stairs.

  The laptop screen lit up, though it was dimly red as well. He could, however, make out the stopwatch on it. The hundredths of a second numbers were still too fast to register like they were on his phone, but he thought they might be a little slower. He felt almost sure the seconds were clicking over slower than they should. When he did his best to compare them to the seconds on his phone, he thought the laptop’s seconds were taking almost two seconds each, nearly a 2X increase.

  Whoa! He thought about the track team—on which he was a so-so middle-distance runner. Even if I only sped myself ten to twenty percent during races, I could probably win the hundred-meter dash! He shook himself, irritated. I sure as hell hope I can find something better to do with this than cheating on races… His thoughts halted as he realized, Maybe, if I turned pro, the winnings could help us financially? After consideration, he realized turning pro wouldn’t bring in money quickly enough to solve the apartment problem.

  He went back to work.

  He further eased his push on time. He noticed a little glow appear from the lights and the room brightened. He noticed his violet pen going through oranges to yellow, then green, and on through blue toward violet… All the colors of the rainbow, he thought. He looked at the clock on the laptop, seeing it better now. He thought the seconds were taking almost a normal amount of time to turn over now. He checked the time on the laptop versus his phone’s stopwatch. By watching it for a while, he decided the laptop’s clock was still fractionally slow.

  So, it seems like I can judge small differences in the speed of time by the color of the room but when I speed up more than 2X I’m in the dark?

  He considered trying to measure the time differences more accurately but decided he didn’t need any more accuracy on the differential. After all, he didn’t know if his phone was exactly keeping his personal time, or whether time was running somewhat slowly on the phone compared to himself as well as on the laptop compared to the phone.

  With that thought, he watched the seconds tick by on the phone and decided they felt like they were the right length. He compared phone seconds to his pulse, which usually ran about sixty beats per minute. They were about the same.

  Letting himself go completely back to normal-time, he started searching the internet.

  ~~~

  Witt leaned back, fascinated by the physics of light he’d just learned about. I think I might like to work as some kind of light scientist, he thought.

  It turned out that the highest frequency waves of visible light, violet, were about 790 Terahertz—or 790,000,000,000,000 waves per second—and the lowest frequency, red, was a little more than half that at 400 THz. So, he thought, trying to picture light waves. If I speed up almost 2X, violet light waves from outside would be arriving at my eyes half as often as violet waves normally do, therefore hitting my retinas at abou
t 400THz and looking red—a phenomenon he’d learned was called “red-shifting.”

  At that point, he’d thought, All that’s good, but why aren’t the—even higher frequency—ultraviolet waves getting red-shifted down to fill in the upper frequencies of the light spectrum? Why does it go dark?

  More searching on the internet had taught him that UV covered a much wider range of frequencies than visible light so some of those should indeed be shifted down to become visible light, even if he sped time a lot more than 2X. However, there just wasn’t that much UV around down at ground level. Plenty of UV came from the sun, but most of it didn’t get down to Earth because the higher its frequency, the more our atmosphere filtered it out. There was a moderate amount of lower frequency UV-A, some UV-B—the stuff that caused sunburns—and almost none of the highly toxic UV-C. Human lighting systems didn’t generate much UV—both because it’d be wasted energy—since we can’t see it—and because it’s bad for us.

  So, some of the small amounts of light he was seeing at 2X probably was redshifted UV, but the more he sped time, the less light there was to see—because there just wasn’t much higher frequency UV running around, especially indoors because window glass blocked what little came down through the skies. Above UV were X-rays and there were even fewer of them at the bottom of Earth’s atmosphere. Essentially, this meant that if he sped time past 2X it was going to be dim. And at high enough X, it’d be dark.

  Crap, he thought, just when I was thinking I’d be able to do all kinds of cool stuff with this ability, I find out I’m gonna be blind doing it! If I did try to rob a bank, I wouldn’t be able to see the money.