Liminal Wake Chapter 2: Spin
Find Chapter 1 here.
2. Spin
The biologist snapped out of his thoughts as a stranger stepped up beside him.
“Dr. Colbeck! Good afternoon,” said an amiable voice as Calvin noticed a hat-wearing reflection in the plexiglass.
He turned instinctively and smiled, extending a handshake.
“Good afternoon to you, as well,” he said, pulling himself out of his reverie. “I think we may have met before. You strike me as a reporter type, though pardon me for not remembering your name. I’m awful with names. You fishing for quotes?”
Bennett moved his champagne flute to his left hand to extend for a handshake. He’d finally found him.
The encounter had taken effort. A half dozen polite conversations with guests eager to offer story leads had preceded it, each one edging him closer to the respected cell biologist. The Viewing Room’s intimate sprawl of low lighting, draped tablecloths, and soft chairs arranged for hushed conversation made it difficult to pick his way through the hundred-person gathering to reach the spry Loop critic of fifty-two.
Dr. Colbeck was in the last place he would have guessed: not at the lavish spread of hors d'oeuvres or perched at one of the pedestal tables, but right up next to the water.
Bennett knew Colbeck’s biography before Iza had formed the plan, before he’d struck a deal with New Dimension Resources to save Charlotte, and before he’d altered his deal with the anti-Loopers to help get them information—a choice he sharply regretted.
Dr. Calvin Colbeck was founder and board chairman of the nascent non-profit healthcare firm Life Care, served on the Puget Interspecies Bioethics Board, and took frequent speaking engagements at Reformers’ events.
Calvin’s gray hair had grown out a bit compared to the short cut of his online profile photo. But the slightly outturned ears, deep facial lines, and neat mustache all matched. He had no obvious physical impediments. Dr. Colbeck was aging better than most of the Puget Independent Territory.
The journalist tried to hide his sigh of relief as he released his grip on the man’s hand.
“Funny, I’m bad with faces,” he replied. He’d studied photos of Colbeck on the flight, just to be sure he’d remember. “I’m Bennett Stillman, from the Mirror. We’ve spoken via video call a few times. You’re a hard man to get to interview in person. Always on the move.”
“Ah, yes,” Colbeck replied cheerfully, “my speaking engagements take up most of my time outside the lab. Phone calls are easier.”
He paused, furrowing his brow. “Stillman… Now I remember. You’re the one who gave me a full paragraph about the petition for a new levy for this.”
He made a sweeping gesture to the water, his tone sobering as he looked back into the grey-green haze.
“I gave the view of the Bioethics Board a full paragraph,” said Bennett, facing the water now, too. “But your quote came out the strongest.”
“‘Raising taxes on families already struggling with medical care to finance refurbishments that won’t contribute to their well-being in this life is preposterous.’”
The biologist, now standing shoulder to shoulder with the journalist, tilted his head back as if he were casually trying to remember: “‘Any new levy should go toward lifecare, not Loop-care.’ I think that’s what I said.”
Bennett knew Colbeck recalled it perfectly—proudly. Judging by online reviews, the biologist’s excellent memory had impressed his former students at the University of the Puget Territory as much as his teaching.
“To be honest with you, Dr. Colbeck,” Bennett began, leaning into what he’d learned from his anti-Loop associates, “I think the Interspecies Board relies a bit too much on rhetoric about healthcare. The papers you’ve written on the Nots’ physiology—or what little we understand of it—seem like a better basis for arguments against the Loop, don’t you think?”
He held up his free palm apologetically, knowing this would launch Colbeck into a deeper conversation. The journalist wasn’t even convinced of the opinion he’d just expressed. Still, nothing engrosses a man more than defending his own statements.
Colbeck dove into his favorite subject like a duck into one of the Loop gardens’ lily-padded ponds. Not only were the Loop’s enigmatic alien power sources his area of expertise, but his philanthropic work was also dedicated to reducing its perceived necessity—a fact he reminded Bennett of within the first breath.
The biologist only paused to snatch smoked salmon and crabcake appetizers from passing trays and grab a new flute of champagne.
Asking questions—even prickly ones—was comfortable for Bennett; it was having to give his own answers to those same questions that made him uneasy. It’s part of why his current assignment with the anti-Loopers was so difficult.
They saw things too black and white. They were too sure of their answers.
Bennett was stalling bringing the biologist up to the landing pad. Fifteen minutes into a trail of queries, Iza had realized this. His wrist buzzed: Landing on the VIP pad in five. Where are you?
One more question, then he’d ask the biologist to walk the skybridge with him. If he timed it just right, he’d have no time to think of an excuse not to. It was starting soon.
“Do you really believe the Puget Interspecies Board’s latest paper, asserting the Loop has already reached peak use?” he asked, glancing sideways at Colbeck as they stood in front of the massive wall of water.
Colbeck made an equivocating noise in his throat. “It’s not the point. The point is that the statistics show—”
Bennett shrugged at the reliable and predictable fallback of statistics, hardly listening to the words that followed. At least the anti-Loopers didn’t lean so heavily on polling.
Colbeck had to pause as the room’s congregants pulled like a tide toward the giant screen on the far wall. They followed.
Today’s looper, who would be entering the great spin of the Body, was broadcasting from the band platform on the staging area. Today’s musical performance was atypical—performed by the looper herself, instead of the usual ten-piece band with choreographed dancers.
Sylvie, one of the Territory’s most popular songwriters, played a soft acoustic version of her most popular ballad in a thin, semi-sheer flowing robe of ivory that caught beautifully in the wind. No doubt it had been designed for just this occasion.
She looked surprisingly lucid, considering what was about to happen to her. Her soft brown eyes were calm, almost sleepy. The May breeze swept blonde strands across her face as she crooned,
“Let the journey set you free
manifest paradisical destiny
see the view/ through the gates
your flesh is born new.”
The dulcet melody set Bennett’s teeth on edge. He couldn’t separate the present moment from the near future. Not his future, not hers.
As the last poignant trill of the violin faded, a middle-aged woman somewhere to Bennett’s right whispered loudly, “She’s not leaving a lot behind. Is she even that sick?”
Someone grunted agreement. “Kept her health info pretty private,” a gruff voice replied. “Had cochlear implants, I know, and aphasia. But they couldn’t do anything about that.”
“Forty-eight is still young,” tutted the woman. “Even in these times. Her choice, though.”
Colbeck clutched his champagne flute a little tighter as the overheard conversation faded into the growing murmur of the room. His eyes drifted toward the drone footage on the smaller screen in the corner, which showed a family of four jostling excitedly in the standing-room area, all holding hands.
“You got kids, Mr. Stillman?”
Bennett felt a twinge in his belly as they walked back to their place by the water. “A daughter. Charlotte.”
Colbeck’s smile was warm and fatherly, though he had no children himself. Charlotte would like his lively face, his colorful tie, his vast expertise. For an instant, Bennett wanted to tell the biologist everything.
But he couldn’t risk it—not even if—when—he’d be asked to help shove him into the aircar.
“Don’t ever bring her here,” said Calvin, staring deeply into the water’s haze. “We don’t seem to agree on a lot. But… this is no place for children.”
Bennett slid a cupped hand down his mouth and chin. There was one absolute, non-slogan statement from Colbeck, at least. He smiled thinly.
“I appreciate your concern, Doctor.”
He was about to suggest they leave the Viewing Room when Colbeck spoke first.
“You haven’t asked me the question yet.” One finger lifted off his champagne flute to point at the journalist.
“What question?”
“The question. The ‘where did they come from, where do they go?’ question.”
Bennett raised an eyebrow. “I think everyone’s already asked that—”
The biologist took a bite of crabcake, holding up a finger like he was going to finish his thought.
“New Dimension Resources knows more than they’re letting on. If I were you, Mr. Stillman, I’d press hard. Nobody’s pressed in some time. We just sort of accepted this new reality, you know?” He wiped his mustache with the corner of a napkin, looking contemplative. “The absentis liminalis show up during the Struggle, start popping up in random places—inside houses, in the middle of the street—you know how it is. And they vanish just as quickly. Really, it’s that ability—disappearing, reappearing—that stuns me more than the fact they’re extraterrestrial. And this isn’t even their ideal habitat. I—”
Colbeck cut off the train of thought. He was censoring himself.
Bennett’s professional curiosity was piqued, and the anti-Loopers would surely want to know. He stepped a bit closer.
“What makes you think NDR knows more than they’ve said? Off the record, of course.”
Colbeck’s eyes flicked away and back again. “Call it an intuition.”
Bennett was surprised Colbeck had raised the question of where the supposedly “transliminal” creatures that powered each looper’s disappearance came from. All Colbeck’s work—or at least his public-facing work—was about how to handle the extraterrestrials, the Nots, and how to manage the PIT’s never-ending health crisis without relying on the Loop.
They were practical matters, not ones which scratched a philosophical itch.
The biologist’s brain, after the three and a half flutes of champagne, had jumped tracks before Bennett could press any further. Calvin leaned in closer, close enough to see for certain Bennett’s left eye was artificial.
“Did you know, some—there’s some evidence they can talk to each other. Not primitive communication, like monkeys. But…language.” He nodded for emphasis, holding eye contact.
“You sound a bit like Joel McMillan,” Bennett replied, smiling crookedly. He couldn’t resist the provocation, even while shifting toward the door. “Listen, perhaps we should—"
Colbeck interjected a scoff, waving his hand erratically.
“Those fringy mushheads are full of misinformation. They’re going to get innocent people hurt. Uncompromising radicals always do.”
Bennett glanced up at the ceiling as soft percussion music swelled above them, coming through the loudspeakers into the Viewing Room.
Calvin solemnly watched the in-memoriums—carefully written months ago—which flashed on the wide screens at the back. This was a funeral, after all. A permanent goodbye.
Yet life—strange life—made itself apparent in the midst of memorial.
Colbeck instinctively took a step back and gasped softly. Just below their feet were the pressure-controlled tubes that drew these novel creatures from the holding tanks below and spat them into the Body.
Through the deep water, pale forms no longer than his arm began spiraling upward, driven by the nascent gentle current of the propellors, rising from below their line of sight. Through the haze of deep water, they looked like ghostly harbingers of the afterlife.
Fine, flowing pearlescent tendrils covered lean bodies vaguely similar to rats; long-digited, webbed paws—not quite “hands”—paddled gracefully like otters as they spun.
The room gasped and then hushed as the lights dimmed out and the rhythmic music grew. The celestial beats of hang drums dominated as a low rushing sound intensified until it was deafening.
The pair of men backed away from the glass as the water swept counterclockwise, tumbling and spinning the otherworldly bodies with brutal force.
All the arguments, all the nuanced questions vanished in the rush.
Bennett grabbed the doctor’s shoulder and hissed a command in his ear: “We’re leaving.”
……
Find Chapter 3 here.
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The concluding book of the duology, Oblivion’s Reach, is coming next month.