61. Fall Out

He was semi-napping in his tent, backpack under his head, one early morning. He’d been reading, but now he was just watching the light rain bead up on the outside of his tent until it got heavy enough to run down.

It felt good to lie there and not think about much of anything. He couldn’t see much further than the edges of his field, it was so hazy.

So it was definitely kind of a shock to suddenly get a whiff of the burned-dust smell of a heater running full blast.

“Mat!” somebody was yelling. “Mat, is that you?”

And he was up, backpack over his shoulder, and bursting out of the tent.

“Colette! Colette?”

She was standing in a freaky warped bubble of particle accelerator lab, eight feet high, in the middle of the field, and hot dry air was blowing past around her.

“Hurry! Please, Mat, hurry!”

“I’m c—“

He jumped.

He was lying on his back on the floor of the lab, looking at the ceiling, noise-canceling tiles in a metal frame. White and beige. The backpack was under his arm, strap pulling a little on his shoulder. Fluorescent lights hummed. Everything was quiet. The air was dry and hot and smelled weird. No... it smelled normal. And it wasn’t that hot. It was normal American winter heating. Winter. Which winter?

“Avi? C—“

He didn’t have time to finish her name before they were crowding around him and he was holding onto them both like he was never letting go again.

***

Mateo looked weird, Avi thought when he had a chance to actually think, and not just scream inside his head.

“Are you ok?” He almost started patting him down.

“Yeah...I uh, woah, yeah. I’m fine. Don’t go.” Mateo grabbed his sleeve like he wanted to make sure he was real again. “What year is it ...uh, on uh this end?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Avi promised. “It’s November 26th, 2005.”

“Three months!” Mateo whispered, and then just stared into space for a while.

“Are you ok? Are you sick? Hurt?” Colette said. Avi didn’t blame her. Even through the weird old-fashioned clothes, he was noticeably skinnier and as pale as his dad. His hair was almost legit black, like it was after a long winter before the sun could turn it dark reddish brown again.

“I...uh, I’m fine. I’m fine. I think going through one of those makes you dizzy. I’m ok now.”

“It does,” said Colette, one arm still behind his back like he might flop back onto the floor without help. “It’s normal, if anything about wormholes can be called normal.”

“Right. Right.” He looked blankly at her, then his eyes widened. “You went through. To get those notes.”

She nodded. “Avi wanted to, the idiot, but we couldn’t risk losing touch with the only person alive who can make wormholes.”

Mateo started laughing, a little crazily, but somehow it didn’t worry Avi. Crazy just fit with everything else.

They gave him oreos from the vending machine and coffee and pretended not to notice when he started ... well, more leaking than exactly crying.

“Gosh, it’s sweet! I don’t remember it being so sweet. Did they change the recipe?” He was only able to finish half the pack, but he wanted a refill of coffee.

Then he asked for a ride home. “No, my parents’ place. Please.”

Colette had been about to argue the practicalities, but that please went right through her like a hunting arrow.

“...ok.”

“...it’s night,” Mateo said, shocked, when they got outside. He was staring at the lights over the parking lot.

“Yes, uh...seven-thirty,” Colette said, looking at her phone.

“Your phone!”

She paled, Avi could even see it in the weird orange sodium light.

“What...oh no, did yours get you into some kind of trouble back in...?”

“No, no. I’m cool. Well, it did at first. Then they gave it back. I have it in here.” He was gripping an old army backpack. “They didn’t want me leaving future stuff back...then.”

“They knew you were a time traveler?!” Colette looked staggered.

“Let’s talk about it in the car,” Avi said quickly. “Mat’s freezing.”

“Yeah, I left my coat in the past. Ahahaha. Sorry. It’s been a weird day.”

“It’s ok.”

They were pulling out onto West Avenue — Mateo staring at the brightly-lit gas station and the East Asian grocery on La Crosse Street and the burrito place and houses and the traffic like he’d never seen them in his life — when he took a breath and said “Did I say thank you? Thank you, if I didn’t. I don’t even know how freaky this had to be for you guys. And — do my parents...?”

“They think you might still be alive,” Avi whispered. “...what do you want to tell them?”

“...can I tell them the truth?” Mateo asked, finally looking away from the immense sweep of the river and the cantilevered bridge as they drove over.

“What happened?” asked Colette.

He told them.

“...you could have landed across the Chanel!” Colette sounded so freaked that Avi was glad she wasn’t driving.

“Yeah, I lucked out. Nigel said that too.”

“Who’s Nigel?”

“The guy who uh, answered your notes. I’m getting to him—“

They got to the Smith-Ramirez house about eight, and some lights were on. His dad came to the door, and stopped dead.

“Mat...?” he whispered. Then he yelled “Rosa! Rosa! He’s —“

Mateo’s mom came racing down the hall, saw him on the porch all skinny in weird clothes, gasped, burst into tears, and dragged him into a rib-breaking embrace.

It was a few hours later. Mateo had eaten a sandwich and downed some water and basically passed out on the couch, leaving him and Colette stuck clarifying the nutso-sounding explanation they’d all given.

“So it’s ... it’s true? He was in another time?” Mateo’s mom whispered. She sounded like she wasn’t sure he wasn’t clinically insane, something happened to him in the past three months.

“Avi?” Mateo mumbled. “Can you open a wormhole and show ‘em?”

Avi opened his mouth, then shut it.

“Yes, if we hurry.”

Avi and Colette were sort of used to seeing wormholes now, at least it was just really freaky as opposed to mind-breaking. It occurred to Avi now how much guts it must have taken for that English dude to stand his ground and keep his head enough to talk to them.

Mateo and his parents didn’t have that kind of motivation — they all headed for the back wall of the lab and stayed there, staring. They both hung firmly onto Mateo, too.

But what they saw knocked the air right out of Avi’s lungs with fear too. Rather than a smooth expansion, the thing thrashed its way instantly to a circle, casting foreign past sunlight blazingly on the lab floor, flailed around in shapes he didn’t have a name for, and died in a warping of space. Whatever had happened to allow a stable wormhole must be ending.

“Shit,” breathed Mateo, even though his mom was right there. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s bounce.”

Mateo went straight back to the couch when they arrived back at his parents’ house. He kept looking at everybody in turn, like he had to keep convincing himself it was real. His mom took his hand and started peering at the scar on the back of it.

“Mamá, todo esta—“ Mateo started, then remembered he and Colette were there, apparently, and finished “—fine. It’s all fine.”

“This was a bad burn!”

“It was an accident, mom, I just wasn’t paying attention. It was a good job with the computer, I was lucky to get it.”

“You say you worked on Colossus?” his father asked. He was sitting closer than usual, like he was afraid Mat would disappear again.

“Well, uh, you know, some. I’m not sure how much difference I made but it was a — a good place to land.” His mother was still examining his hand.

They were still up around midnight, sitting in their living room, like everybody was afraid to leave anybody else alone.

“Did you bring me a Curta Calculator?” Avi dared a joke.

Mateo laughed, shakily, and his parents both smiled, automatically, just because he was alive and back and able to laugh.

“A what? I never saw one of those.”

“You wouldn’t’ve,” Colette said, “They only came out in the fifties.”

“He knows that!”

“I know what?”

“Remember? We were going to get one for our science fair project back in high school but they cost like five hundred dollars.” Nobody even cared what they were talking about now, they just wanted to prove and keep proving that this was real. Mateo’s parents had parked themselves on both sides of him on the couch, and had their arms around his shoulders like they were never letting go. Mateo didn’t seem to want them to. And he’d asked him and Colette to stay, almost embarrassed.

“Dude, I don’t remember this at all. A calculator from the fifties?”

“Yeah, we ... we went crazy about it that year. I almost tried to build one but you talked me down. You know, about the size of a tomato paste can—“

“A pocket calculator?”

“You...you don’t remember this?”

His parents looked instantly terrified and looked ready to start checking him for old head injuries.

“...wait,” Colette said. “Mateo? When did WWII end?”

He paused so you could almost hear the record scratch. “1945, I think. With Japan, anyway.”

“And in Europe?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t study for this!”

“Guess. Ballpark.”

“Uh...I dunno, 1946 or something? Like a little later but not a lot later.”

“Kid,” said Mateo’s father. He probably meant to sound teasing but everything still sounded relieved to tears. “Don’t quit your day job.”

“What?”

“It ended earlier in Europe.”

Mateo looked politely skeptical and a little confused. They all looked automatically at Colette.

“It ended earlier in Europe. And the first pocket calculator came out in the fifties. Unless.”

“Unless what?” Avi started to say, then looked at Colette. “Wait, you don’t think—“

“I don’t know and I have no way of finding out.”

“Hey, guys, guys,” Mateo said with another shaky laugh. “I got a B-minus in history and that was only because I seriously crammed. I’m probably just remembering wrong, right?”

“...probably,” said Colette.

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