Smita is never going to see her mother do anything again. Smita is over. Smita is done.
Her eyes close of their own volition, and her blood spills across the floor, and her part in the story ends.
Erin waits until Smita stops breathing before she sighs, straightens, and picks up the Hand of Glory. Assignments like this are the worst. She should be home, watching TV and ignoring the homework that won’t be graded anyway. (She’s a theology student because they have people in the Theology department, loyal people, people who fear Reed as much as they adore him. She could show up for class naked and singing Queen songs, and they’d use her as an example of modern Dionysian behavior. Her supposed graduate career is just a cover for the life she’s not openly allowed to lead.) Instead she’s here, in this sterile, brightly lit place, watching a woman’s blood—a friend’s blood—spread across the tile floor like a benediction.
“I really am sorry about this,” she says.
Smita doesn’t answer.
The computer where the test results are stored—not by name, but the numeric codes are easy enough to decode, if you know what you’re looking for, and Erin knows what she’s looking for—is unlocked, and offers her the data she requests with mechanical joy, holding nothing back. Computers are orderly things. They want to please her. She combs through Smita’s email, looking for signs the woman lied. It seems unlikely; terror and hope are uncomfortable bedfellows, and when they lie down together, frivolities like lies tend to fade away. Still, she was made to be diligent, and so diligent she will be.
The Hand still burns. No one comes to disturb her while she’s looking at the pieces of a dead woman’s life, and when she’s done, she feels she can say with certainty that Smita was keeping the mystery of the antigens in Roger and Dodger’s blood to herself: it was a toy she wasn’t ready to share. Other students helped with the testing, and they’ll have accidents of their own over the next few weeks, brakes that don’t work, faulty electrical wiring in their dorm rooms, whatever’s required to get the job done, but they’re not a high priority. They won’t have enough of the pieces to do any damage.
The scarring around this moment is less severe than it was before Smita died. She’s probably demanded a reset here more than once, but not much more: two times, maybe three. Little flickering candle flames of alternate chances. They can’t have led to good endings, though, or she wouldn’t be here now. That’s the trouble with playing Choose Your Own Adventure with reality: when they go back to the beginning of the book, none of them remember. Roger and Dodger don’t know yet what she is to them, or them to her. They don’t even know Darren’s name.
Her fingers stumble on the keyboard, which has gone blurry. She blinks her tears away, trying to keep her composure. She shouldn’t have thought of him. It’s that simple. Darren is in the past, and until they find a clear path through this maze, they can’t go back to get him. Each revision has corrected some prior mistake, like Dodger backtracking through her equations and fixing the numbers, but correcting prior mistakes creates the opportunities for new ones.
This would be so much easier if the two of them could reach the point of becoming fully manifest and able to remember. Erin pushes herself away from the computer. Deleting the data would leave a hole. Anything that’s destroyed leaves a hole. The only way around it is to create something instead.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The Hand of Glory sees her through her final bloody errands and out of the building, back into the world. The Hand of Glory keeps anyone from noticing when she lights the match. The fire doesn’t want to catch, resisting in the face of sodden wood and weather-treated stone, but there are ways. There are always ways, if you want something bad enough, and eventually, like a phoenix, the flame rises.
The Hand of Glory keeps her hidden as she stands at a safe distance and watches the building burn. The chemistry students don’t make it out. She’s sorry about that.
By the time campus security shows up, with the scream of fire engines not far behind, there’s nothing left to save.
BLAME
Timeline: 06:02 PST, December 9, 2008 (the next day).
Someone hammering on the door drags Roger from a sound sleep. He was dreaming of