Page 14 of Butterfly Effects

“I really don’t think it’s him,” said Dr. Morrow. “None of these readings—”

The hum got even louder, until I couldn’t hear Dr. Morrow speaking anymore. It swelled and swelled, and then, just as it was becoming painful, popped like a bubble, filling the room with iridescent glitter that hung suspended in the air, twinkling and shimmering and turning everything prismatically distorted.

The glitter wasn’t all that appeared. It was accompanied by five people in skintight bodysuits that gleamed like liquid metal as they moved. The suits were cut to look almost segmented, chest, abdomen and legs called out by subtle lines and joints. Two of the suits were a rich, jewel-toned blue, while the other three were red, black, and gold.

Their heads and faces were exposed, revealing straight black hair and eyes as blue as my own. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought they all looked like me, identical interlopers from somewhere else entirely.

I stared. I didn’t know what else to do. Dr. Morrow was less subdued. Feathers bristling like he was a cat facing down an intruder rather than a Caladrius in his own territory, he stepped toward them.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

The closest stranger cocked their head to the side, looking at him impassively. “Native life-form,” they said. “Non-dominant species. Some sort of healer? Believes we are trespassing.”

“Remove but do not revise,” said one of the others. They raised a hand, turning it sharply in the air like they were opening a door. Their eyes blazed briefly white, and Dr. Morrow froze.

A third stranger stepped forward, eyes glowing white, if not as brightly, and Dr. Morrow’s feathers smoothed themselves back into their normal, neutral position. Then he turned and walked out of the room, not saying a word.

“What did you do?” I gasped.

“The local creature would have interfered,” said the first of them to have spoken. “Interference is not to be allowed.”

“You are the cuckoo queen?” asked another.

“I— What?”

“She is,” said a third. “She has reached the forbidden instar.”

“Your crimes have been noted and documented, and will not be permitted to go unanswered,” said the one who’d put the whammy on Dr. Morrow. “You will stand before the tribunal and answer for what you’ve done.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I protested. “I just wanted to help Mark wake up.”

As I spoke, I realized none of them had looked at Mark since they’d appeared in the room. He was motionless in the bed, and with the charm blocking his mind, he might as well have been an inanimate object. My breath caught, and I promptly shoved all thoughts of him behind walls of simple math, hiding them from view.

They couldn’t see him. Dr. Morrow had stuffed an industrial-strength anti-telepathy charm into his gown, and now he was invisible to these strange Johrlac. Because these were Johrlac, not cuckoos: the way they held themselves, the way they dressed, even the way they spoke, it all whispered of origins beyond this world. They were alien. To me, to Mark, to everything around them.

And they were surrounding me. Suddenly realizing the danger I was in, I whirled, ready to flee the room, and stopped as two of them grabbed my arms. They didn’t bother avoiding my skin, seeming unconcerned about touching me directly, and as their fingers closed around me, I realized they were wearing gloves of some transparent, flexible material.

I struggled, trying to jerk away, and they held me tighter, pulling my arms straight. The one I was starting to think of as a spokesperson stepped forward.

“We have left you free for too long,” they said. “That ends now.”

The hum resumed, louder now, infinitely louder, until it was consuming everything and I finally understood the mathematics behind its rising and falling tones, the way it all fit together, the things it was trying to accomplish, and that didn’t matter at all, that could never have mattered—

Because we were gone.

Four

ANTIMONY

“Most people’s parents take the grandkids to an amusement park and come back with too many stuffed toys. Mine come back with extra kids.”

—Evelyn Baker

Buckley Township, Michigan, in a field on the edge of the Galway Woods

SAM WAS SOMEWHERE IN THE trees, having the absolute time of his life. Occasionally he emerged to show me something terrible that he’d found scuttling around in the underbrush, and after I had sufficiently admired it, with as much ooh-ing and ahh-ing as I could manage, he would swing away again, off to find some new living nightmare that had arisen in the paradise of horrors my paternal grandparents called their home.

Half the things he brought out, proud as a cat with a dead rat to present to its owner, were species I had believed extinct since before I was born. But they’d survived here, in Buckley Township, Michigan, where the town motto should really have been “If you see something, no you didn’t. Shut your fucking mouth before someone hears you.” Or possibly the simpler “Snitches get stitches.”