Radiant - By Christina Daley Page 0,46

at the chasm before looking at him again. "How did we get here?"

"We translated," he said.

She wrinkled her brow.

"I mean, I translated," he said. "But I brought you with me."

Mary's brain was still trying to focus. "Like, you just beamed us over here or something?"

"Sort of," he said. "You remember in Physics class learning about space, time, and matter? And that matter is mass over energy?"

"Yeah," she said, though she only vaguely remembered that.

"Matter is energized mass moving through space and time," he explained. "So everything we call 'matter' is really just different frequencies of energy existing in space and time. Your body, the clothes you're wearing, the air you're breathing, the sound of my voice—it's all energy existing at different frequencies. Does that make sense?"

"I-I guess." Mary felt a bit like they were sitting in class now.

"Energy is all around you, even if you can't see, hear, or touch it," he continued. "Sometimes you see its manifestations. Other times, you don't. But it's always there. Energy animates your body. It's what makes you uniquely you. It's what separates you from an inanimate object. Translation is a 'shift' in the three dimensions. By translating, we move through space without time. We were on the roof, and now we're here. No passage of time. Make sense?"

"No," she said. "But that doesn't matter. How come you can do this?"

"What is matter again?" he asked.

"STOP IT WITH THE PHYSICS CRAP AND JUST ANSWER ME!" Mary cried.

"Sorry," he said. "Matter is mass over energy. Just like translation is without time, I was energy without mass. I…I don't normally have a physical body."

Mary didn't say anything for a moment. Then, in a low voice, she said, "You're not Carter. Are you?"

He shook his head.

"Who are you?" she asked. "What are you?"

"It's difficult for me to explain. I'm trying to find the correct words." He looked up as the stars began to appear in the sky. "I like to watch the Earth whenever I can. Whenever I don't have to do something else. I like watching humans the most. I watch what they did and how they did it. I watch how they laugh when they are happy or cry when they are sad. Nothing was the same. There are similar reactions, but from person to person, each joy, each sorrow, each pain, it's different with each one. People deal with their emotions in such different ways.

"I was always curious. Sometimes I would come down to the surface for a little while to be around humans. I was always invisible, of course. I could feel the energy of the emotions more intensely when I was closer. Still, though I saw the 'what' and the 'how' of their feelings and actions, I never understood the 'why.'

"Then, about seven Earth years ago, I was tracking pieces of a comet as they fell towards the planet. They were going to create a 'meteor shower,' as humans called them. I had noticed over the ages, people stopped looking at the sky as much. Still, a few came out to watch. I had to concentrate on my task, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to hazard a glance towards the Earth."

He took his eyes from the stars and fixed them on Mary. "That's when I saw her. A child with the most enchanting energy I had ever seen. She had a small telescope, and she stood on the roof of a building with her mother and grandmother. There was a look in her eyes. It was wonderful. Magical. Completely unavoidable. I knew she was watching the meteor shower. But I wanted to think that she was watching me."

Mary remembered that day. It was her tenth birthday, when Mom gave her the telescope. She had been so excited about it that she took it straight up to the roof to try it out. As a bonus, the meteor shower happened.

"I started visiting the surface more often," he said. "I stayed invisible and kept my distance, but I watched the child. I watched how her energy made her grow. I watched her live. I still had tasks, but whenever I could, I watched her. My favorite times were when she would come to the roof by herself. I wanted to think that she came up to visit me, like I came down to visit her." He paused. "I was watching her on the roof one evening. She fell asleep, like she did many times before. I normally stayed at a distance. But then