American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,133

had some sort of way to pass lakes of acid. And it doesn’t look like you do…”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” says Mona. “There’s no such thing here.”

“We don’t have much time here,” he says, glancing up at the ceiling. “The moon is out, but it won’t be for long. That’s when things get dangerous,” he says softly. Without warning, his image sputters and fades a little.

“Hello?” says Mona.

Coburn flickers back to existence in mid-sentence, as if he is totally unaware of the change. He is saying, “—ow are you here at all? I thought I was the only one who was transposed here. I haven’t seen anyone from the staff since. And it has been”—he turns to consult something on the ground—“my God, over half a year since the storm.”

Mona gets an idea. She holds up her hands to get his attention.

He glances up. “Mm? Yes?”

“You,” she says, and points, “you stay,” she holds her hands palm out, and mimes pushing on him, “right here,” and she points down at the ground. She does it again, to make sure he catches on.

He watches her, blinking. “Ah. You want me to stay here? Well, fine, fine, though I can’t imagine why. Where do you have to go?”

“Well, let’s see,” says Mona, and she slowly backs out of the room.

She’s about a dozen feet away from the crackling image of Coburn when his mouth drops open. “My goodness,” he says. He stares around himself. “Where… where did you go?” He turns completely around. “Laura? Laura? Are you still here?”

“What the fuck is going on,” says Mona softly. She turns around and jogs down the hall to the administrative offices. She finds a yellowed, ancient notebook on one of the desks and a piece of colored chalk from one of the blackboards. Then she returns to the room with the mirror.

“Oh!” says Coburn. “And there you are again.” He looks at what she’s brought. “Wh—where did you get those? Those are… I know that stationery. That’s from the lab. How did you get those?” He whirls around, staring at the walls. “Did some part of the building get transposed here, too? I’ve never seen any suggestion of it…”

Mona writes: “where do u think u are?” and turns it around to show him.

He reads it, and says, “Well, I’m right here. Why do you ask?”

Mona writes: “cause right now Im in ur lab.”

“What!” says Coburn. “What do you mean?”

She pauses, frustrated, and points to the notebook—I mean this, what I wrote.

“You’re in the lab?” he says. “You mean CNLO? Right now?”

Mona nods.

“Are you… you sure?”

She nods again.

He stares around her, his eyes taking in things totally invisible to Mona. “How?”

She shrugs, as if to say—You’re the fucking scientist. Then she points to the first question: “where do u think u are?”

Coburn is so shaken that it takes him a moment to answer. “I suppose I don’t know. It is a terrible place, where I am. The ground is glassy and black, there are lakes of bubbling fluid I dare not touch. I have lived off of terrible fruit that grows on strange trees in sodden fields. It is an abandoned place. But how can you be here if you are in the lab?”

Mona glances around. Naturally, she doesn’t see anything that he describes: just the cold, dark metal walls of this room.

Coburn thinks. “Unless, of course, you are not here. And I am not really there, in the lab, with you, which, I presume, is what you’re seeing. The lab, I mean.”

She shakes her head.

“Am I wrong?” asks Coburn.

Mona writes: “no. u r right. agreeing. u look all black and white like an old tv show”

Coburn squints to read her answers. “I do?” he says, astonished, and he looks at his arms and hands. “How marvelous. I see no effects here. What is wrong with your writing, though? It’s horrendous.”

“Well, fucking forgive me,” mutters Mona.

“Are you… let me guess.” He looks over his shoulder, but evidently he can’t see what he’s looking for. “Are you in the room with the lens, Laura? Right now?”

Mona glances at the mirror. She supposes it could be a lens, though it’s not transparent—at least, not in any way she can see. But she hasn’t seen anything else that could be called a lens, so she nods.

“You are? How fantastic!” Even though Coburn sounds like he’s in dire straits, he appears fairly delighted with what she’s told him. He licks his lips and glances