Parallax Read online

  parallax

  William Hawk

  EchoPress

  MICHIGAN

  Copyright © 2018 William Hawk

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

  EchoPress

  Michigan, USA

  www.williamhawk.net

  Published 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-0-9992887-1-9

  Book cover design by Whitney Scharer

  Book interior design by Stacey Aaronson

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public

  names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to

  actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Ignition/ William Hawk

  This dedication is to honor those who choose to serve others over themselves.

  For those that are willing to be inconvenienced for someone else’s convenience.

  For those that are willing to have less

  so others can have more.

  For those that are willing to make time when they have no time to spare.

  For those that love when love seems undeserved.

  For those that see with their heart and not their eyes.

  For those that don’t want special treatment but give special treatment.

  For those that will never hurt others but look for opportunities to help others.

  For those that will do good no matter how much they’ve experienced evil.

  For those that have found true joy that has nothing to do with the number of toys.

  For those who look for ways to serve even if someone doesn’t deserve it.

  “William looked down at his host’s body. This was the most challenging part of any snap, trying to figure out the body that he would be occupying for the next twenty minutes or so. His eyes landed on his host’s feet, which were broad, flat and tough. The toenails were curled and yellow, the chocolate skin calloused. This man was a farmer, and if somebody had asked William to guess, he was probably a member of an ancient civilization. But the images in the parallax didn’t come with captions, explanations, or even names. It was up to him to figure it all out.”

  CHAPTER 1

  NAP.

  William found himself standing in the middle of a tropical field. He wore a loincloth, a long agricultural instrument in his hand.

  Five hundred breaths.

  The snap had started a half-second before, when William looked up at the parallax from his pod, the flickering movie-like images playing on the ceiling above his head. He’d focused on one in particular, a brown-skinned indigenous man in a green tropical field, a pyramid visible in the distance.

  William had reached out and pointed his finger at the flickering image . . . and now he found himself in that indigenous man’s body. He had exactly five hundred breaths to literally live in someone else’s skin.

  This was a “snap,” also known as a tag-along. It was the term he and his team used to describe the brief space of time in which they were allowed to enter another person’s body.

  William was a Change Agent Level Two, typically called a CA2, as were the other four members of his team. They were trying to reach the next and highest level, a Change Agent Level Three, better known as CA3.

  William felt himself take a deep breath.

  Four hundred ninety-nine.

  Most snaps lasted long enough for a certain event to occur. William believed that the Ancient Engineer had selected each snap for its depth of emotional experience, though that was only rumor. Nobody actually knew how the Ancient Engineer made his decisions, or did anything, nobody except for Proof.

  William looked down at his host’s body. This was the most challenging part of any snap, trying to figure out the body that he would be occupying for the next twenty minutes or so. His eyes landed on his host’s feet, which were broad, flat and tough. The toenails were curled and yellow, the chocolate skin calloused. This man was a farmer, and if somebody had asked William to guess, he was probably a member of an ancient civilization. But the images in the parallax didn’t come with captions, explanations, or even names. It was up to him to figure it all out.

  He sniffed the air. It was rich, moist, loamy. Clearly, it was easy to grow crops in this type of climate.

  Then William felt himself begin to move. He watched his arms throw the end of the long tool into the moist earth, turning up the soil. He felt the strain on his triceps, back and abdominal muscles. The movement felt smooth. This particular farmer had had long practice doing this exact movement.

  The breeze kicked up, and his host stopped working. He stood there, feeling the breeze on his bare chest. He sipped water from an animal bladder that hung around his shoulder. The distant brown pyramid shone close in the clear, blue sky. In the opposite direction stood a small ridge, no more than ten meters high, covered in tropical growth.

  Then a sharp sound echoed from the ridge.

  William felt every muscle in his host’s body suddenly stiffen. This was a natural response to danger, but where had it come from?

  The sound came again. It was faintly metallic. He felt his body swivel toward the danger. His eyeballs scanned the ridge as his breathing quickened.

  Four hundred ten. Four hundred nine.

  A light flashed on the left side of the ridge. His face quickly turned to it. In the underbrush he saw the unmistakable glint of metal.

  William heard a voice yelling in an unfamiliar language. It took a moment for him to realize that it was his own voice, and it was shouting in Mayan. I’m in the ancient Mayan civilization. He looked behind him. A Mayan woman walked toward him from another part of the field. She was topless, a baby on her breast. His host made a gesture to stay back. She immediately stopped, but she didn’t back off, just stood there staring past him.

  Then he dropped to the ground behind a small mound of dirt and, through the tangle of branches, studied the commotion on the ridge. He felt his heartbeat speed up.

  More flashes from the ridge. He lowered his head, then tentatively lifted it again. Watching.

  Three hundred fifty-four. Three hundred fifty-three.

  Then the figure came into view. It was a man wearing a pointed metal hat. He wore another sheet of metal on his chest and strange cloth breeches on his legs. In his hand was a halberd, a long axe blade with a stabbing tip.

  Behind him was another figure. And a third. And a fourth. All dressed in the same odd fashion.

  William recognized that outfit. These were sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers. Conquistadores.

  The Spanish soldiers carried something long and tubular. He couldn’t quite make it out. They seemed to be talking among themselves. One of them turned the long tube so it was vertical to the ground, while another poured some powder into the tube and then used a long stick to push down the powder.

  William’s host stood up to get a better look. He felt the man’s intense curiosity about the tube. Then his host approached the visitors.

  The soldiers saw him and began talking excitedly among themselves. The one tamping down the powder pulled out the stick, and the others lowered the metal tube until it was horizontal and pointed the opening at William.

  William knew full well what that metal tube was: a gun.

  Two hundred forty-six. Two hundred forty-five.

  There was more excited talking, then the tube shook and made a thunderous sound. A puff of smoke appeared at the opening. The earth next to him exploded.

  William heard h
imself screaming as his host dropped to the ground, taking cover. He felt the man’s utter confusion and panic. Then he stood up, and the curiosity flooded his body again.

  A voice cried out behind William. He turned around. The woman with the baby at her breast was shouting something at him. William felt his arm wave at her, making a gesture. It felt ambiguous.

  He turned back to the soldiers. They had turned the tube vertical again, and they were dumping more powder into it. He warily approached the group, his eyes fix on the tube, half walking, then hesitating.

  One hundred thirty. One hundred twenty-nine.

  The Spaniards had grown agitated now, shouting at one another, pointing at William as he approached. The one dumping the powder couldn’t get the stick out. He was yanking and pulling.

  More shouts from behind. William turned. The woman was pointing at the strange visitors and hollering.

  Then William felt something hit him in the back, between the shoulder blades. He fell to his knees, his pain receptors firing, then got back up again. On the ground lay a rock, about four inches across. The Spaniards had thrown it at him, probably out of frustration, while his back was turned.

  Angry, William watched his hand pick up the rock.

  Eighty-three. Eighty-two.

  His arm pulled back, then windmilled forward. His hand released the rock. It cut a narrow arc through the air toward the Spaniards and glanced off one of their helmets. They began yelling. At last they pulled the stick out of the tube. As they lowered it to aim toward William, the tube exploded. One of the Spaniards stumbled backward, hands over his face, and then fell on his rear end.

  William breathed a sigh of relief. They’d intended to kill him, but the gun exploded too early. He knew that it happened frequently with early weaponry.

  One of the Spaniards turned and whistled. Behind them, several more Spaniards appeared on the ridge. These men weren’t wearing steel plates on their chests, and they were holding long steel knives in their hands. They ran down the slope toward William.

  He felt himself hyperventilating. These Spaniards were out for blood, Mayan blood. His blood.

  His host turned and ran backward, away from them, back toward the woman. She was retreating, too, stepping carefully with her short legs.

  Sixty-seven. Sixty-six. Sixty-five.

  William’s host moved fluidly and carefully across the land that he’d been peacefully tilling a few minutes earlier. The squish and the squelch of the mud around his flat feet slowed him down, seeming to glom onto his heels. He imagined the same was happening to the Spaniards.

  Forty-two. Forty-one.

  He glanced backward. To his surprise, he saw that they were gaining on him. Their legs were longer than his. His host had probably never seen men with such long legs.

  William redoubled his efforts. If he could get to the edge of the jungle, on the other side of the clearing, he could lose them.

  Twenty-four. Twenty-three.

  He arrived at the woman, hurried her along with his hand on her back. Her skin felt sweaty and soft. The baby had released its mouth and was starting to wail at being jostled.

  A sound behind him. The Spaniards were yelling. They had gained on him. The jungle was just a few steps away.

  He heard his voice urging the woman on. William presumed that this was his host’s wife and child; otherwise, he would’ve easily gone faster.

  Eleven. Ten.

  The Spaniards were suddenly upon them, and William felt himself knocked to the ground. To his left, he heard a short cry, his wife had been knocked down, too. Their baby had flown a few feet away, and one of the Spaniards had grabbed the child.

  William felt intense panic radiating through his body. He’d never experienced a snap this intense before.

  Five. Four.

  He tried to get up to reach for his baby. He felt something kick him in the ribs, and he fell over. Next to him, his wife was wailing. The Spaniards were speaking in a language he couldn’t understand.

  Three. Two.

  One of the Spaniards stood over him and lifted the long steel knife.

  “Vaya con Dios,” the man said.

  One.

  The man thrust the weapon toward William.

  Snapback.

  CHAPTER 2

  ILLIAM’S EYES FLEW OPEN. HE WAS LYING on his back in his pod, just as he’d been five hundred breaths earlier.

  He lay there, feeling himself take huge gulps of air. His body was hyperventilating, because his body thought it was still in the host’s body. It wasn’t, of course. His breaths were his own and free now.

  The roof of the pod slid open, and he sat up and looked around the pod tank. Five pods were arranged in a circle, facing one another. They looked like futuristic coffins. William sat there, breathing, wondering what had just happened.

  Next to him, a girl sat up in her pod. Her widened eyes told William that she was still agitated.

  “Wow,” she said.

  William nodded, wiping the sweat from his face onto his sleeve. “That one almost got me, Grace.”

  She agreed. “That was so intense.”

  “Who did you snap to?”

  “I was the wife with the baby.”

  “That was you?”

  She nodded. “I think we were a couple. She had strong feelings for you.” Grace took a moment to absorb it. “I’ve never breastfed before. It’s an extraordinary sensation.”

  William wiped his forehead. “And I’ve never been one second from death before. Lucky for me my guy was hyperventilating.”

  On the other side of Grace, a guy sat up in the pod. He was rangy, dark-haired, with a hawklike expression. His facial features were contorted into an almost permanent sneer arranged around his beaklike nose.

  “Hunter,” said William, “which one were you?”

  “The one that almost killed you.” Hunter’s face was flushed, and his eyes were filled with excitement. “That was so wild. I was right on the edge of murder.” He flexed his hands and looked at them in amazement.

  The other two people in the pod tank, Trina and Jeremy, lifted themselves to sitting positions as well. All five of them sat there for a moment, recovering and chatting. This was how it usually happened afterward, a few minutes chewing over what had just happened, then later a full debriefing for Proof.

  A beautiful woman with almond eyes came over and undid the cuff that had been tied around William’s arm. He’d forgotten it was there. “Welcome back,” she said.

  “Thanks, Shana.” He looked up at her. Even after all these snaps—and the team had done at least twenty by now, he’d stopped keeping count—she was still a mystery. Her brown hair draped over her shoulders, and a green polyester shift draped onto her body. Her unusual face reflected a mélange of many ethnicities. A psychological wall had been erected between her and the team members, and nobody was able to breach it.

  William watched her move among the team members, undoing the cuffs. Then, one by one, each of the team members climbed out of the pods and onto the floor. “It’s all over your back,” said Grace, looking at William from behind. He knew what she was talking about: the white goop that inevitably accumulated at the bottom of the pod during a snap. Nobody knew what it was.

  William approached the third male on the team. He had pale skin, wire-rimmed glasses, and an alert manner. “Jeremy, which one were you?”

  “I was tagged to one of the Spanish guys.” Jeremy dropped his head. “He was just insane with greed.”

  “It just looked like a peaceful scene, but . . . ”

  “Conquistadores are peaceful?”

  “No, just you know, the pretty field, the pyramid.”

  Hunter cleared his throat. “So who’s ready for the debriefing?”

  “I am,” said Trina. She was the fifth member of the team, somewhat stouter than the others, with blonde hair and round cheeks. Her outgoing personality saved the team from taking itself too seriously. She could be considered the party girl, if there were
any parties here in the quarters.

  “Me too,” said Grace. “This one showed me a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  Grace smiled beguilingly as they moved out of the pod tank and down the wide corridor.

  CHAPTER 3

  S THEY ENTERED THE DEBRIEFING ROOM, William held his hand up to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glare.

  The room was totally white. The windows, the doors, the seats, the tables, everything—a bright, blinding white. And smooth, too. The surfaces were a slick polymer.

  William had never gotten used to this room. It always took him a moment to adjust to this pristine place after returning from a snap. The real world was full of browns, blacks, greens and blues, a thousand different textures, a million different sounds and smells, but not here. All those elements had been antiseptically removed from this room.

  But this wasn’t the real world. This was the debriefing room.

  The other members of the team walked in after him. Trina bounced happily in her shoes. Grace moved with her customary, well, grace. Hunter loped like a wolf, and behind him Jeremy moved quietly, his eyes taking everything in. They moved comfortably because they’d all done this many times before. They knew how the routine went.

  The room was littered with chairs, sculpted and swooping modernist pieces. William took a seat in his customary one. They’d all quickly settled into habits, preferring certain seats.

  He looked down at the cup in the holder in the armrest of the chair. It was already full of the odd liquid that they found here following every snap. It looked almost like tea, but not quite. He lifted the cup to his lips. Its flavor reminded him of something, but exactly what was always just out of reach. He suspected that it served some purpose other than refreshment.

  Grace sat down next to him, Trina on the other side. They seemed to see that he was still shaken by the experience.