Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 68 - Connected

Photo by MK Hamilton on Unsplash

As with everything now, it all boiled down to time, the preciousness of a second, the precariousness of a minute, and the ability of a single hour to transform lives for eternity. Time wasted was time spent not realizing the importance of time and how every moment, every ticking movement of the clock’s hand, held within it immense unseen potential for something unexpected, for transformative junctures where lives pass from inertia to dynamism, from lost opportunities to nearly incomprehensible transformations of the grandest scale.

In that fraction of a second, as Olivia’s hand began to move, still holding the phone’s receiver to her ear, a thousand different contingencies presented themselves at once, different pathways, different scenarios, where in that division of potential scenarios, a limitless number of outcomes were unknowingly laid out before her. But the one that took prominence was the cognitional click in her brain that blared like an alarm telling her that the phone on the other end of the line had stopped ringing in mid-crescendo.

On the platform above her, Frankie, Tony, and James began their lumbering descent down the stairs pressed against the concrete wall to join her and Tabitha on three floors below. Tabitha, next to her, also realized the wisdom in James’s warning that the previous onset of a black hole - the same one that had chased them down the narrow concrete hallways of ENH like a mammoth pulsing black orb — was likely brought on by the very same act in which Olivia was now engaged: desperately making phone calls, reaching out, striving to connect with her past.

Yet in the movement of the considerable, echoing warehouse laboratory populated with enormous cobbled-together contraptions, computers, and contrivances, Olivia heard the phone’s click when it stopped ringing and the pause that followed. At that moment, the synapses in her head fired off in all directions. She now held the phone halfway between her head and the phone’s cradle, almost hanging up, ready to nearly slam it down before another black hole could somehow manifest from the phone’s minute residual energy, which was laughably minimal compared to the other mammoth machines — all now thankfully powered off — that populated the very room in which she now stood.

And then, amid the pause, her hand frozen in space with the phone’s receiver in it, she heard a voice.

“Hello?” the voice said, and then another pause.

Someone had answered.

It wasn’t just a fluke. The telephone system wasn’t crashing once again, as it had for so long during the last few weeks since this whole mess began. It was as it had been earlier when she somehow managed to get through to Charlotte, her mother-in-law, over a thousand miles away in North Carolina.

“Hello?” the voice said again.

Like an involuntary reflex, Olivia quickly pushed the phone back to her ear. The faint sound of the voice she was sure she’d just heard resonated and set in. She closed her eyes tightly and listened. Breathing. She heard the sound of breathing.

“Dad?” she asked trepidatiously and heard a man’s choked voice on the other end.

“No, baby,” the voice said, then another sob. “It’s me. It’s David.”

Olivia broke. Overwhelmed, the moment had finally come. The worry, waiting, and endless doubt of the last few weeks swelled up and flooded over as Olivia’s knees gave out, and she tumbled to the ground with the phone still clutched to her ear.

Tears of every sort flowed from her eyes - grief from David’s recent funeral, relief from finally having her questions answered, and joy at the sound of her husband’s voice.

Was her husband alive? Was he actually alive? The answer was yes, most definitely yes.

“David,” she said and gasped at the word.

“Baby,” he answered.

“You’re at Mom and Dad’s?”

“Right here. Looking for you.”

“I’m in Chicago.”

“Can you come home?”

“Yes, well,” she looked around the room. “I’m not sure. Everything’s gone wild here. I’m at some laboratory. Where this all started.”

“What do you mean?”

“This all started in a lab,” she said. “Have you seen these black hole things?”

“Yes, they’re here, too.”

“At the farm?”

“Right in the living room,” David said. “Swallowed up the television. Scared me to death.”

“David,” Olivia said, her words getting choked in her throat again. I can’t believe we’re talking.”

“I’ll come to you,” David said. “Where are you?”

“Uh…” she rapidly tapped her forehead with all of the fingers of her right hand, her mind scattered. “ENH. It’s called ENH. ENH Initiative.”

“ENH Initiative,” David repeated, saying it not for her but seemingly to someone else.

“Is Mom and Dad there with you?”

“Yes,” David said. “And Jeremy, too. Is there an address?”

“What’s the address here?” Olivia called out to everyone in the room. Tony, Frankie, and James were on the ground floor now, just feet away.

“I love you,” she gasped, turning back to the phone, realizing it should have been the first words from her mouth. “I lost you. I lost you, David.”

“I know,” he told her. “I don’t remember any of it, but Jeremy told me. This has all been a nightmare.”

“The kids,” Olivia said.

“I know,” David answered. “I know.”

“Can you come to me?”

“Jeremy and I will leave right now,” he said, then again: “What’s the address?”

“What’s the address?” she asked again, but at that moment, James reached from behind Frankie and slammed his hand down on the phone’s cradle, killing the connection between Olivia and David.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash