The Swift and the Surface Tension of Spacetime
Please enjoy this excerpt from my latest collection of superhero-themed short stories available now on Amazon!
Part I: The Canary in a Collapsed Mine
Fox Broome’s horse lingered behind a group of prospectors as they rode back across the great plains. His compatriots left none the richer for their venture to the west’s golden hills. Fox joined them three weeks into the months-long trek back to their native Chicago. With his gifts, or curses depending on the perspective, he could travel from one coast of the continent to the other in what amounted to no time at all. Yet, he was now a nomad with nowhere to call home[1]. After some time spent brooding, he realized if he wanted to help people, he needed to be around them. In the weeks they’d been traveling together, Fox saved their lives four times over and they had no idea. He also was able to stop a group of slavers and prevent a wildfire from destroying a small town. Fox never spent long in Chicago before, but any city that can last for 40 or so years that far west is worth visiting. He expected they’d have plenty to keep him busy. Still, he worried about the people on the frontier who didn’t have many folks they could count on.
“Storm’s coming,” Red, the leader of this expedition shouted, “what do you think, Fox?” He looked back at him. Almost reflexively, he slowed time. The heavy dark clouds were still far enough away, but Fox wasn’t sure if there was a town or settlement on their path. He bounded off his horse, sprinting towards the storm and finding nothing in its path. He raced back, past the group until he came to an elevated cave system that would provide shelter. He returned to his mount, a dappled mare named “Lucy,” and slipped back into realtime. “I bet we could make it another 10 miles or so before it’s on us. If memory serves, there’s a place we can wait out the worst of it.”
“I’m not trying to drown in the prairie,” Victor, another of their companions, said. “We could go back to that mining town we passed this morning. Hunker down there for the night.” Some of the others in the party grumbled at the idea of backtracking, but Red merely nodded, albeit reluctantly. It was an easy ride back. The town was called Gustin, after the family that owned the nearby mine. It was a decent-sized place, Fox reckoned, home to 300 miners and their families. He gave it a fairly thorough once-over when they first rode past. The people he saw were frozen in what looked like happy moments.
The livery sat at the edge of town, and Fox offered to put up the horses and brush them down. The rest agreed quickly and made their way further into Gustin’s commercial center. During his previous run-through, he noted two inns. The associates of the mine’s owners, or anyone with money, stayed at the Wesley Martin. It was fancy but it seemed empty, so maybe no one of means came out here at all. The second was a more traditional saloon called the Cisco Catie’s, complete with burlesque dancers and the promise of more intimate attention. His party would likely end up there. He took his time with the horses, because he enjoyed grooming them, especially Lucy. He probably would have left the group already if not for her. Traveling by horseback always seemed so laborious, but he bonded with her. He fed and watered the rest of them, lingering in Lucy’s stall feeding her some apples he’d saved.
One fortunate side-effect of his condition, as he’d taken to thinking of it, was before bad trouble hit, he got a vague sense of something coming. Fox felt it then. So did Lucy, who dropped the last of the apple to whinny and back into the corner. Before he could react, Fox felt the ground rumble. He stepped outside the livery to see a pillar of dust climb into the sky illuminated by the setting sun. It was the mine. He slipped outside of time and donned his suit. He rushed towards mine, across town on the eastern side.
The Swift arrived to see a brand-new divot in the hilly plains, about 150 feet back from the entrance. He followed the cracks in the ground, trying to get a sense of what awaited beneath. He saw people clustered near the entrance; a wooden frame built into the side of one the rocky hills. He saw fear and worry frozen on their faces. But he didn’t see surprise. It was as if they knew by ripping the coal from the ground, the Earth would take something back. The Swift allowed himself a moment to feel admiration for the folks stalled in time before him. They ran forward into danger to help their fellows, even though they had to know there was nothing they could do.
He propelled himself into the mine, backtracking a few times when he encountered collapsed tunnels. Soon, the Swift found a group of miners, rushing away from a cloud of smoke and debris, like a giant gray worm slithering through the tunnel. It had no face, just rounded edges that still managed to look sinister and hungry. Time was all but stopped, so the Swift stopped running. He took tentative steps into the cloud. He was unable to see, but he felt around until his hand landed on a man’s arm. He felt his way through the dust until he came to a collapsing wall of rock, under which one miner was about to be buried. He lay on his back, knocked over by the force of the blast. The Swift wasn’t sure if he was falling or starting to sit back up. Still, he held his lantern aloft, so he saw death coming. Fox found all the people still inside the mine, and he had to get them out before it was too late.
He mapped it out in his head, going over and over the order and path he’d go until he had it memorized. When fully outside of time, he can’t lift or move anyone. It’s as if the reality around him is a giant sculpture on a rotating platform. He could change his position relative to it very easily, but he couldn’t move anything or anyone. When he simply slows time, things get peculiar. Time advances more slowly, but the further he moves from a point, the faster time goes there. It makes his head hurt to think about it too deeply, so he just accepted what he could and worked within the limitations. He crouched down next to the miner with the lantern, ready to go to work. From everyone else’s perspective, he had less than six seconds to save 13 souls.
He slipped back into real-time, immediately slowing it as much as he could. He picked up the miner, all but weightless in his arms, and rushed him out 100 feet past the entrance. He raced back and grabbed a second person. On his way to get the third, he noticed a new crack in the mine’s ceiling. He cursed to himself, but it was already too late to stop. He pushed himself harder and harder as he raced to get each remaining person. He felt strange, not quite pain but something unpleasant. The Swift pushed it from his mind, focusing on saving lives. He didn’t know if what he was came from magic or science, just that it had rules. Rules he was desperate to break. Even with a second stretched to an impossible eternity, time still marched forward, and the entire ceiling crawled towards collapse faster than he anticipated. The Swift almost bumped his head on a larger rock after his ninth trip from the mine to the entrance.
With two left, he had no time — even as fluid a notion that is to the Swift — to think. No matter which one he saved, he might not make it in time to save the other. As he made his way towards the front, he noticed the wall closest to him starting to crumble, a rock jutting out in such a way that he had to bound off it with one foot to maintain momentum. He’d never lost his balance while in slowed time and was almost curious what would happen if he did. The Swift pushed those thoughts aside and propelled himself forward even faster. He dropped the second-to-last survivor a little too hard. The Swift couldn’t spare the mental space to worry about that. He only focused on propelling himself back through the mine, knowing some of the debris would be so low he’d have to duck. Strangely, the rock that almost clipped him before was further back this time. He scooped up the final survivor and raced forward, not even sure how he turned around so quickly. He pushed forward with literal tunnel vision. The entrance shone bright like a target, and he strained but never slowed.
He emerged on the opposite side of the entrance, since the pathway he’d taken with the rest of the survivors became too perilous. Only a few steps from the collapsing maw of the mine, he let it all go. The relief of catching up to the rest of spacetime was immediate, yet his perception of it wasn’t. The Swift saw himself on the other side, dropping the penultimate miner he rescued. His doppelganger was there only long enough for Fox to recognize he was seeing himself. Then the image blurred, stretched thin, and seemed to vanish. Fox realized it was the first time he knew what his abilities looked like from an outside perspective. He allowed himself another instant to think it was beautiful. Then, his perception caught up to everything else. The rumble of the mine collapse continued, as a thick cloud of dust and dirt flew out, covering those people already rushing to help the survivors.
The Swift collapsed to the ground, the first time he’d ever had any sort of physical reaction after using his abilities. He was neither winded nor in pain. Nonetheless, for a few moments, he felt what he could only qualify as wrongness. There was something familiar about it, but his mind was jumbled. Faces and names occurred to him that meant nothing, memories of creatures made of lightning or men of metal as if from a dream. Everything snapped into focus when one of the women from the village touched his shoulder. “Mister, are you okay?”
The seventh or eighth man he rescued propped himself up from a lying position on his elbow. “He saved us, Abigail,” he said, weakly. He laughed, which turned into a coughing fit. Abigail turned her attention to him. The man held up a filthy hand, turned his head away and spit a tar-black wad of something onto the ground. “Excuse me,” he said, embarrassed.
“Are you him?” a voice asked from behind him. Fox tried to stop time, but he couldn’t. Instead, he turned slowly to face three women, one in her sixties and the others barely more than children. “You’re him, ain’tcha? Swifty. I told you he was real, girls.” She laughed and slapped her knee. Something in the laughter broke and turned to tears. She placed her hand on his chest, over the winged foot symbol he stitched over his chest leathers. “You saved me and mine once, you know? That train out by the Cherry Hill Depot? We were all sitting on that train, and the next second we were all on the side of road, watching it derail. And now,” she gestured to the man lying on the ground, “you saved my boy and his friends the same way.” Before Swift could respond, the woman fell into him, embracing him tightly. “Thank you.”
As he returned her embrace, the Swift saw all the miners he rescued slowly getting to their feet. Others noticed him, whispering amongst each other. He knew it wouldn’t be long before anyone able to move would swarm him with gratitude, curiosity or, as sometimes happens, fury. He hated this part of it. It made him uncomfortable. Still, as this mother held onto him, he also felt some comfort. And that’s when it clicked for him. When he knew what to do next. The woman finally let him go, and he smiled at her. He felt fully himself now, almost stronger than when he started. “It’s my pleasure, ma’am. Take care now.” He tipped his hat, then stopped time and raced as fast as he dared. It was time to try to find the only mother he ever really knew.
Fox first met this woman shortly after he discovered his abilities, and before he could fully control them. She went by “Betsy” with the others but told Fox to call her “Zahmeen.” He never knew his parents. He was one of the many babies abandoned during the war against the traitors. Zahmeen was the only person he felt ever truly cared for him. He remembered how gently and kind she was explaining his gifts and that she wanted to teach him how to use them. Older now, Fox realized she probably thought he’d be a hard sell. He was an adolescent boy known for being obstinate and disagreeable around the state home. Instead, he fell into her arms weeping like that miner’s mother just now. Zahmeen held him until he was all cried out. The news that he wasn’t alone, wasn’t the only person who had to hide the biggest parts of himself, gave him a sense of relief he’d never experienced. The time she spent with him at the state home was the happiest of his life, even if she was a strict and unforgiving teacher.
She figured things out about his ability before he did, despite not seeming to possess any power of her own. With patience and compassion, she helped him hone what he could do. She knew just what to say to help him understand his own limits, or how to push past them. What he could do used to terrify him, even more than the other changes and discoveries he made about himself as he came of age. They spent three or four years together, though she would disappear for weeks, at a time. Fox would ask where she went, hoping to hear about others like himself who could do impossible things. “Someone needed my help, Fox,” she’d say, then quickly changed the subject back to that day’s lesson.
They usually trained at night and into the dawn. Just before one of their lessons, Fox first used his powers to save people in danger. A gang of highwaymen stopped a westward caravan, outnumbering the travelers three-to-one. The sound of a gun’s report is what drew Fox to them. A tall, ugly man with a greasy beard and matted hair fired the shot, his rifle still pointed to the sky when he arrived. From a hiding place, Fox saw the armed travelers in the group throw down their small-caliber rifles, only good for hunting small game. “Take what you’d like, but spare our lives,” one of the travelers said.
“Well, that was stupid,” the greasy man said, murder in his voice. “Leave none of them alive, boys!” he shouted over his shoulders, and the men on horseback drew their own weapons as he opened fire. Fox slowed time enough that the first shot crawled through the air slowly. He was able to take the bandits’ firearms and stack them in front of the scared travelers before the bullet even got close to its intended victim. He nudged it with his fingertip so that it would strike one of the wagons. He then raced back to his hiding spot, as time caught up. “What the hell?” the greasy man shouted in surprise. He heard some other man from the back of group say something in Spanish. He didn’t understand any word but “diablo.” The traveler picked up one of the more serious rifles now at his feet and aimed at the leader.
“The good Lord tells us not to kill,” he said, then cocked the weapon, “but I also know the Lord forgives. You have one chance to leave here alive.” Without a word, the bandits rode off into the night. Fox grinned and considered staying or walking up to them and offering help. Instead, he raced back to where he was meant to meet Zahmeen.
When he reached his teacher, he recounted what happened in exuberant detail. Near breathless when he finished, he looked at her, expecting her to congratulate him. Instead, he saw disappointment in her eyes and a frown on her lips. “Did I do something wrong?” he said. Then, before she could answer, he blurted out, “I was almost too late to save them. But I know I can be faster next time.”
Zahmeen spit on the ground. “Next time?” she said, shaking her head. “Why meddle in others’ affairs in the first place, boy?”
Fox was stunned and a little angry. “They were going to be killed!”
She shrugged. “You don’t know that. And maybe they had it coming. How do you know the people you helped weren’t the aggressors? Maybe the travelers were the real thieves and murderers.” She stood silent a moment in the grassy field behind the state home where they trained. Fox had no response. “Or,” she said again, “maybe tomorrow night, those men chase down the people you saved with more men and more guns to slaughter them all.”
“What?” Fox said, finally finding his voice. “I saved lives, Zahmeen. What good is what we can do if we don’t use it to help people?” She sighed, shaking her head again. Though Fox would never admit it, that sigh broke his heart. Things were never exactly the same between them afterwards. She continued to help him, and he avoided trouble for a time. In the few hours between their lessons and breakfast at the home, Fox would sneak away, helping others. Somehow, she knew.
“I’ve taught you all I can, Fox,” she said a few weeks later. “If you’re going to run around this country and play hero, that’s your choice.” Before he could protest, she moved close to him. She leaned in and embraced him warmly. He held on tight, but she pulled herself from his grip. She took a small envelope out of her coat pocket and handed it to him. “This will tell you how to find me if you need to,” she said. “But only if it’s about your gift, not for any cockamamie adventuring or heroics. I know who I’m here to help, and it’s not them.”
In the decades since that night, Fox Broome didn’t hold onto many possessions. However, he’d never lost her letter. He went back to the mining town, to get his pack and say goodbye to Lucy. He wrote his own note to his traveling companions, pinning it to her saddle. He removed his Swift uniform, again dressing like a man simply riding the trail. When he finished changing his clothes, he reached into the inside pocket of his satchel for the envelope. It was crinkled around the edges and the wax seal broken but its two halves still attached to the paper. He unfolded it and read the words Zahmeen wrote for him long ago. They were instructions he had to read a few times to understand. He still wasn’t sure he’d be able to do what they said.
Fox sat on a high column of rock in the desert, cross-legged. He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths and exhaling slowly. He focused on his own heartbeat, and it started to match what Zahmeen described as “the syncopated rhythm of reality.” He thought of it as the heartbeat of the world, but he always had an affection for poetry. He tried to visualize her face, even though it had been decades since he’d last seen her. He imagined the contrast of her bright, white hair against her sun-worn complexion. Her face bore deep wrinkles, especially around her rich green eyes and wide mouth with lips that could go razor thin when she was disappointed. Zahmeen was not conventionally attractive, at least according to what that’s supposed to mean to men. However, Fox still thought of her as the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, focusing on her memory, but eventually it worked. He visualized her standing on the porch of a simple log cabin atop a hill, with fenced in gardens surrounding it. He’d never seen the place before, but the vision was clear. And with it, he felt drawn towards it like a compass needle wobbling northwards. He didn’t know where to go, but rather he could feel his destination.
It was as easy for Fox to get to Zahmeen as it was to get anywhere. He didn’t suit up, remembering how she disapproved of the costume. They’d crossed paths a few times since then, mostly by accident. Or so he thought. The one time he was in full Swift regalia, she looked at him once again with disapproval. “You look ridiculous,” she said. He also believed she could sense him even with time stopped, and she never disabused him of the idea. Still, when Fox neared her location, he reentered real time about 200 yards away. She and six young people knelt in patch of fenced-in garden.
Fox guessed their ages ran the gamut of about six to fifteen. He watched her for a moment. She gently guided the children, who smiled and giggled as they dug shallow trenches in the dirt. Fox didn’t have the patience for growing things. He walked towards them, and Zahmeen didn’t look up from her work though he figured she knew he was approaching. He resisted the urge to lean on the fence. It was constructed from thin tree branches and probably wouldn’t support his weight.
“I figured I’d be seeing you,” she said without looking up, “took you longer than I expected.” She raised her chin and met his eyes. Her face was as he remembered, kind but very hard to read. Her accusatory tone, however, left little open for interpretation. “What did you do?” Fox glanced at the kids before speaking. “Don’t worry about them, they only speak French. And it’s not like children think this kind of talk is any stranger than grown folks’ talk about the tax bill or filling the larder.”
A surge of defiance flushed through Fox, surprising him. He responded in a tone matching her disapproval. “If I tried to talk to you while doing something else, you’d take that as disrespect.” Zahmeen surprised him with a smirk. Fox lost some of his nerve. “If you wouldn’t, then forgive my presumption, ma’am. But I’d like to know I have your full attention.”
Zahmeen chuckled as she set the piece of bone she used as a trowel aside. He guessed it was the shoulder blade of an ox or cow. She clapped her hands up and down, knocking the dirt loose from her fingers and palms. “Don’t try to pull the punch after you throw it, Mister Broome,” she said, getting to her feet in a single deft move. “Though, your presumption was not without merit.” She turned to the kids, who stared at Fox with suspicious curiosity. She gave them some instructions in French, gesturing to the trenches and a basket of wrinkled potatoes sprouting pink roots that made Fox think of tentacles. Zahmeen surprised him again as she placed her hands on the top rail of the fence and effortlessly leapt over to the other side. It supported her weight just fine.
Fox realized that for all she seemed to know about him and his abilities, he knew very little about what she was capable of. Were he less unsettled by arriving somewhere before he left, he’d funnel the surge of confidence he felt into that question. Instead, he recounted the mine rescue to her in as vivid detail as he could muster while the two of them walked to the house, barely more than a shack attached to the property. She took a seat in one of three thatch chairs on the porch. She placed a kettle on a cast-iron grill filled with glowing embers. She handed Fox a wooden box filled with tea leaves, which he carefully apportioned into round metal strainers.
Zahmeen remained unusually silent while Fox talked about the mine rescue. Usually when they spoke on these matters, she consistently interrupted him, challenging his assumptions. He took most of her advice, and when he didn’t, he often regretted it. He told the story with none of the excitement he did the first night he used his power to save lives. When he finished the story, he wanted to ask her direct questions. He again lost his nerve, and simply sat in silence waiting for her response. She swirled her mug, hearing the muffled clink of the tea strainer against its sides. He knew her well enough to know she was thinking.
“To answer the question, I see on your face,” she said after what felt like forever, “I can touch the mana. It’s the source of our power, so to speak. I can’t run fast, move things with mind, or any of that. But I can feel all of it through the same field of energy you used to find me just now. It ebbs and swells, creating ripples that extend on forever. Earlier today, likely when you were rescuing those people, I felt something unlike anything I’d felt before. It felt powerful,” her voice cracked, “unnatural.” She sighed.
“What do you mean ‘unnatural?’” Fox asked. Zahmeen often deflected, answering questions that he didn’t ask. He didn’t have the patience for it today.
She frowned, then exhaled. Her expression reverted to neutral by the time she looked him in the eyes once more. He saw sadness behind them, belied by her slow grin. “Just that, love. Something that defies the natural order.” She reached across the small table between them holding the tea tray to touch his hand. In the light of sunrise, her weathered skin had a russet glow. Even though she’d been digging in the dirt with a piece of bone moments before, her touch was soft and silken. Comforting in the way Fox always imagined a mother’s might be. “Let me try to show you.”
Zahmeen refilled the kettle from a water jug, placing it on the grill. She picked it up the second it began to whistle. Fox placed two more strainer balls into their empty ceramic mugs, holding them as she poured. He set them down on the worn wooden table between their chairs next to the box of tea leaves. “People believe the world and the seconds that tick by on the clock are two separate things. This is not so, but rather they are the emulsion of all we experience.” She looked at Fox, and his expression must have betrayed his confusion. She pinched a stray mint leaf out of the box, and gently dropped it in her mug. It floated on the surface. Despite the scalding temperature, she dipped her fingertip into the brewing tea and swirled it around. The leaf spun in a circle, each orbit bringing it closer to the center of the cup. “The current is like time, and the tea is space. Like this mint leaf, we are bound to both. Only along for the ride. You? You’re no leaf. You’re more like a waterbug.”
“Thanks,” Fox said, with mirth in his voice. To his surprise, Zahmeen giggled.
“No shame in that, child. You can use the surface tension to propel yourself wherever you want to go through space,” she said. “But the leaf can’t move through space without moving through time. Today? You were able to remain in one place and use that surface tension to spin back the current, if only briefly. Does that make things clearer?”
He nodded. “Yes, but if you ask me to explain it to you in my own words, you’ll just get frustrated.”
“Fox, you pushed beyond a boundary you shouldn’t have been able to cross. What comforts me about this is you did so out of the desire to save a life. I may not approve of what you do, son, but I do respect why you do it. Saving a life? Well, that’s something pure.” She stopped and took a sip of the tea. “Maybe,” she said softly, “the Swift can do it again. Maybe he can set things right that went wrong long ago.”
Fox raised an eyebrow. It was the first time she’d ever said anything remotely positive about his actions as the Swift. Normally, she lectured him about how it puts everyone with abilities at risk of exposure. “There are many ways to use our gifts to help those not so blessed,” he finally said, echoing the first lesson she taught him. She smiled. “I don’t even know if I could do it again,” he said. “Though,” he added, “there was a moment, right at the end there, when the strain went away. I think I could’ve stayed in it, somehow.”
Zahmeen nodded as he spoke. “How taxing was the physical toll?” she asked.
Fox shrugged. “Well, usually it takes no toll at all. When I stop it — .”
“You cannot stop time, Fox,” Zahmeen said, sounding a bit more like the woman he knew. “It’s not even real, after all.”
“Of course,” he said, “Stall my position in time. Right. Still, I’ve always had to ‘catch up’ to real time before I could slow or stall it again. It’s why I can’t just zip in somewhere with time sto — stalled, speed it up a little so I can knock around the bad guys or rescue whoever is in danger and zoom out of there again. But there was something when I saw things reverse. I pushed myself. I was desperate to save them. After, just as I saw the earlier version of myself vanish, I was overcome with a deep fatigue. I couldn’t touch my gifts for a few moments.”
Fox looked to Zahmeen for a comment, some answer to a question he didn’t know how to ask. Instead, she leaned forward, taking his free hand in hers. They sat with their hands clasped together, as if praying. “Every instinct I have says this is wrong, Fox. That I should stop you from exploring this side of your gift any further,” she said, sounding less sure of herself than he’d ever heard. “Yet, time is the one enemy none of us can defeat. Except maybe you.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Fox asked, pulling his hand back from her grasp. “Do you think I could,” he didn’t have the words to express the concept, but tried anyway, “reverse time and stay there?”
Before she could answer, the sound of laughter proceeded the children running to the porch from the garden. The eldest one, a girl with lighter skin mottled with freckles and a perpetual smile, said something in French. Fox never had much skill with languages, but he could tell she was asking Zahmeen’s permission for something. She just nodded, and the kids ran off, laughing some more. “They’re going to wade in the creek and try to catch some crayfish, maybe even a turtle.”
Fox nodded, wondering if the turtle would be a pet or an ingredient for soup. They sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping their tea, as he thought about the one moment in his past he longed to do over. “Could you have stopped yourself?” Zahmeen asked, and Fox looked up as if he’d been caught stealing.
“What?” he asked, wondering if she could read minds and then wondering if she’d just heard that thought.
“You said you saw yourself,” she replied. “The instant before you ran back into the mine. Do you think you could’ve prevented yourself from running in there?”
“Why would I do that?” he asked. Zahmeen just shook her head.
“When the children come back,” she said ignoring the question, “I am going to take them to the neighboring property. Mister Clemens sometimes has work for them to do, and he has plenty of room in his big old house.”
“Why?” Fox asked, finding Zahmeen more difficult to follow than usual.
“Because we’re going to examine this further. Test the limits of what you can do.” She drained her teacup and stood, signaling their conversation was over. “But this could be dangerous, and I want them as far away as possible.”
She gathered up the cups and the kettle to take them inside. Fox watched her as she shuffled into the house, noticing for the first time that she looked her age.
[1] After the heartbreaking events of “The Swift Meets The Holy Terrors” in Tales of Adventure and Fantasy Book 1 — Journeyman Josh
