Magisterium Read online

  Magisterium

  Jeff Hirsch

  Jeff Hirsch

  Magisterium

  PART ONE

  1

  Glenn followed the hum of machinery out to the edge of the forest.

  “Dad! Dinner!”

  Balancing a tray in her hands, and her tablet under one arm, Glenn eased around a patch of snow stained blue from the lights of the generator that powered her father’s workshop.

  Workshop was a grand term for what Dad had built in the back corner of their yard. Glenn had tried to tell him he should fab it — they had the money when he first built it. He said you couldn’t let machines do everything for you; sometimes you had to use your own two hands.

  Of course, what his own two hands got him was a leaky roof and walls that listed to one side as if they were caught in a perpetual hurricane.

  Inside, Dad was flat on his back, buried deep underneath the metal guts of “The Project,” a patched-together mix of the best tech their limited budget could afford, scrap metal, and whirring motors.

  Glenn paused at the open door, the dinner plates rattling on the tray. She told herself it was stupid to be nervous, but the single form that sat on her tablet — nothing more than a few lines of text and her school’s seal — loomed in her mind. Getting it had taken an hour of tense consultations with teachers and administrators. Now all she needed was one more signature.

  “Dad?”

  No response. Glenn moved a set of plans off a workbench, set the tray down, and dropped into Dad’s one concession to the modern world: a delicately fabricated white gel chair that swam around her like something alive, molding itself to her body as she sat. As she leaned back, a headrest sprouted up and cradled her head like a small pair of hands. Glenn woke her tablet. She knew it was no good pushing him — he’d resurface when he was ready. She might as well get some studying done.

  Glenn followed a maze of glowing schematics across her tablet.

  It was for her computer engineering test the next day and it was almost laughably easy. After all, she was her father’s daughter. She could build a computer in her sleep. Glenn flicked through the screens until she got to the equations. Her breath went shallow as she dug in and unlocked one set after another, like a burglar who had all the keys.

  “Hey.”

  Dad had pulled himself out from under the heap of metal and was rubbing bluish lubricant off his hands with the tail of his shirt. Glenn paused; it was always a bit of a shock to see him these days. He had been working nearly nonstop since being dragged under by this latest idea, whatever it was, and it had left him as thin and ragged as a scrap of paper. His skin was deadly pale, waxen, and stretched over bones that seemed to ride far too close to the surface. There was an exhausted, feverish look in his eyes.

  “I brought some dinner,” Glenn said, turning to the now wilted pile of sandwiches on the table next to her. “Oh …”

  Her father smiled weakly. “S’okay.”

  Glenn held her breath as he poked through the plate, exhaling when he sat back down with a curry with fresh veggies that she had heavily fortified with a protein-and-vitamin spread. It was like feeding a refugee. But what choice did she have? If it hadn’t been for Glenn dosing him with the nutrients, he would have faded away weeks ago.

  He hadn’t always been like this; her father had been a promising builder once — had done a lot of the work that led to the invention of the sleek glass tablet in Glenn’s hand — and was supposed to have gone on to do big things, but, like everything else, that went away one night ten years ago. Since then he’d produced nothing, choosing instead to chase ideas down the strange dark alleys that only he could see.

  “You getting close to something?” Glenn asked.

  Her father shrugged, nibbling at the crumbly edges of his dinner, barely taking anything in. “Field strength fails,” he mumbled, running a free hand through his thinning hair. “Who knows? Maybe it’s too small, or it’s the spell, or maybe the power levels …” He trailed off, his eyes locked on the dusty floor, the sandwich about to slip out of his fingers.

  “I could help,” Glenn offered. “I’ve got two years of mechanical behind me now. And you always said no one can build like a Morgan.”

  “You finish your homework?”

  “Like, finished finished?”

  “Glenny.”

  “I’ll do it in the morning.”

  He glanced up at a small clock set on a shelf behind her. “It is the morning.”

  Glenn looked over her shoulder. It was 2:00 A.M. “Oh yeah.

  Well, later morning. Promise. Five minutes tops. It’s easy. Boring easy.”

  Dad smiled, a wisp, there and then gone. “Well, boredom is the price you pay for being a very small genius.”

  “I’m not so small,” Glenn teased, nudging his leg with the toe of her slipper, trying to draw another smile.

  Glenn took her own sandwich off the tray and fiddled with it, tearing the bread into little snowflakes and letting them fall.

  “I talked to Mrs. Grayson again today.”

  Her father stopped chewing. Behind him, the generator cycled up with a sigh, the only sound in the long stillness that sat between them.

  “I don’t belong in my grade,” Glenn said. “You know that. No one talks to me.”

  “What about Kevin Kapoor?”

  Hearing that name sent a shiver through Glenn. She saw a flash of snow and a white plume of breath but managed to recover before she got sucked back into the night before.

  “He just talks to me because he’s a bigger weirdo than I am.”

  The only sound now was the low hum of the generator and a

  determined rustle as her father dug into the palm of one hand with an old rag, wiping at dirt and grime he had cleaned off minutes earlier. His skin went red and livid, and still he scrubbed. Glenn’s heart twisted.

  She didn’t want to hurt him. She wanted to tell him to forget it and go back to her room, but she knew she couldn’t. She had to press on.

  “Dad — ”

  “I just … I don’t think …”

  “Mrs. Grayson says my grades are good enough to skip fourth year and go right to the Academy, and then — ”

  “The Deep Space Service Academy won’t take you until you’re eighteen,” he said. “No matter when you graduate.”

  “They changed the rules last year, Dad,” Glenn said. She had told him a dozen times, but he never listened. “As long as you’ve graduated, you can start the program. I could finish it in three years, maybe two.”

  Her father lifted his head, and the dark hollows of his eyes, haunted and deep, fell on Glenn.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  Glenn traced her finger around the words spread across her tablet.

  “Technology changes all the time,” she said quietly. “Maybe by then, someone will invent something that’d make it possible to come back.”

  Silence. Her father was staring at the floor, his hands limp on the ground in front of him, spread like an open book.

  “You know this is what I want,” she said.

  His head bobbed slightly, almost a flinch. “I know.”

  2

  “Dad …” Glenn reached out to him, but his eyes were unfocused and his lips began to flutter silently, too fast and too low for anyone to hear but himself. He started to push back toward The Project.

  “Dad. Wait. We have to …”

  But it was too late. He was gone.

  The approval form sat in front of her like a collapsed star, infinitesimally small but infinitely massive. One touch of her finger and it would go flying to her father’s tablet, where it would lie in wait, requesting his signature the next time he powered it up.

  Glenn looked up from the screen. On
ly the soles of her father’s feet were visible, as if the machine had devoured him. Who will look out for him? she wondered. Who will make sure he eats? Who will talk to him? The idea of her father alone, his entire world reduced to the confines of a shabby little workshop and some project no one could name or understand, made something inside Glenn sink painfully. But still, another part of her felt the riptide of the world drawing her out and away.

  Her father reached for a wrench and tightened a bolt. The

  machine’s hum dropped into a lower register. She wondered if he’d even notice she was gone.

  Glenn moved fast, before she lost her nerve. She swiped her finger across the glass and the form flew away. As she got up, the gel chair swam back into place as if she had never been there.

  Glenn leaned in the doorway and looked out into the dark forest that ran along the edge of their property. Even though the towering lights that marked the Rift border were set a mile back into the trees, Glenn could just see their eerie red glow.

  “Night, Dad,” she said.

  A wrench turned. Something popped and hissed.

  Glenn turned from the workshop, leaving the sandwiches where they were, hoping he would remember to eat.

  Glenn flopped onto her unmade bed without even bothering to turn her lights on. Gerard Manley Hopkins leapt up from the darkness and joined her, flopping over onto his back to expose his belly. The little cat was slate gray from nose to tail except for a perfectly white circle, like a patch of snow, at the base of his throat. Glenn scratched at the circle until, as if a tuning fork had been struck, a rumble rose up through his fur. Glenn had loved that sound ever since she and her mother had found Hopkins near death on their front porch ten years ago.

  He lay there helplessly, bleeding and battered, but the instant Glenn touched him he began to purr. They had spent weeks nursing him back to health.

  With a touch of a finger on her tablet, a series of tiny projectors around her room came to life, throwing a 3-D image of the night sky onto her bedroom ceiling. It was as if the ceiling had disappeared and she was looking straight up into the stars, unburdened by the light pollution that hid the real stars behind a flat curtain of gray. Glenn would be exhausted at school, but she didn’t care.

  “Eight thirteen.”

  There was a soft tone as the house’s computer went to work.

  When it was done, a faint green dot winked at a corner of the ceiling.

  “Expand.”

  The green dot grew larger until the emerald body of the small planet became visible. A text field popped up next to it, but Glenn ignored it. She already knew everything there was to know about 813.

  Mineral-rich and Earth-like. Much of its surface covered in heavily canopied jungles. A single research outpost situated on the northern continent.

  The next manned trip to 813 would leave in four years. If she couldn’t get through high school and the Academy in that time, she’d never be picked. If she did, she’d be twenty when the ship left and, traveling beyond the speed of light, twenty-five by the time she got there. Of course, due to the quirks of physics, while five years would pass for her, twenty or thirty would pass for everyone at home. Her father would be in his seventies by the time she got there and even older if she ever made the trip back. No one ever did come back, though. What would be the point? Everyone you knew would be gone.

  Glenn pulled Gerard Manley Hopkins close.

  “Don’t worry, Hopkins, I’ll take you with me.”

  “Rooooowr …”

  “Seriously. They encourage people to bring pets now. Makes the trip easier.”

  Gerard Manley Hopkins wiggled away from her. His eyes glowed in the dimness of her room, skeptical.

  “What?”

  Hopkins sneezed dramatically, then ran to the edge of the bed and leapt off, disappearing down the hall.

  Glenn fell back into her thick pillows. “Coward.”

  A sharp ping startled Glenn. Her tablet pulsed blue, on and off, sending cold shadows dancing around the walls. She knew who it was.

  Kevin had been messaging her ever since last night. She had ignored the messages, all ten of them, but there he was again. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. Ignoring him was a losing game. He was Kevin Kapoor; he would never give up. Glenn snatched up the tablet and opened the line.

  “Kevin, look, I don’t think — ”

  “Cupcake Slaughterhouse.”

  Glenn stared at his image on the screen. Kevin was rail thin with big brown eyes opened wide and intense. His Mohawk was magenta and stood straight up like an open fan. In his hands he held a wrinkled, ink-splattered page. Glenn could tell he’d been at this for hours.

  “That’s a terrible name for a band,” she said.

  “Art School Foot Fetish?”

  “This is why you called me? This is what couldn’t wait?”

  “Ha,” he squeaked. “Like you were doing anything. Hey. You

  think Lorna Bale is a robot? I mean, robot is the only answer. Right?”

  “Answer to what?”

  “How she could be so hot. I mean, nothing naturally occurring could be that hot.”

  “I don’t know. The sun? Listen, Kevin — ”

  “Lorna Bale Is a Love Robot,” Kevin said. “Now that’s a good name for a band.”

  “Kevin.”

  “Lorna Bale Is a Love Robot. Tonight only!”

  “What did you want?”

  “Fine. You hanging around after school tomorrow? I could, uh, really use some help with history. It doesn’t fit into my worldview, you know? Cause and Effect. Action and Reaction. What’s that all about?”

  Kevin waited for her to laugh, but Glenn looked away from the screen and twisted her rumpled comforter in her fingers. She wished she could dive underneath it and disappear. So this was how he was going to play it. This was the plan.

  “Please!” he mock wailed. “If I don’t learn my history, I’ll be condemned to repeat it! Condemned, Morgan!”

  In moments like these, Glenn wished she would have simply

  walked away that first time she met Kevin outside his father’s office.

  Dr. Kapoor was the highest-ranking local council member and the district psychologist. Glenn had been seeing him, at her father’s insistence, every week since her mother had left ten years ago. One day she was on Dr. Kapoor’s waiting-room couch doing her homework when Kevin sat down on the floor beside her and started talking. Glenn ignored him completely but Kevin returned the next week and did the exact same thing. And the next. And the next. He kept up that one-sided conversation for six solid months until he finally turned to Glenn and said: “You know, Morgan, I will not be dissuaded. For I am stalwart.”

  Glenn had laughed. Stalwart. She had never actually heard someone say the word out loud before.

  Glenn turned to her window. It was already lightening with the dawn. What did it really matter if she met him? As soon as Dad signed the form, she’d be out of school and on her way.

  “Sure, Kevin.”

  “Ha! I knew it! I knew you couldn’t say no to a chance to — ”

  Glenn swiped her hand over the glass and cut the connection before he could finish. She was surprised to find her heart pumping and a staticky buzz sizzling through her. Glenn looked up and there was 813, a great green stillness amidst the jumble of stars. Somehow knowing it was there, like a distant promise, put Glenn at ease. None of this mattered. She would get where she was going and everything would be fine.

  3

  “But why did everything change after the Rift? And why did it happen in the first place?”

  Kevin sat cross-legged on the snow-dotted soccer field the next day. His fingers clasped his stubbly skull on either side of his now cobalt blue hair. It was as if he was trying to hold his brain in. Glenn had spent the last hour helping him study for a history test covering major events from 2023 to 2153. Leave it to Kevin to get fixated on day one.

  “We’ve been over this,” Glenn said. “We c
an’t get stuck.”

  “I have a thirst for knowledge, Morgan. I want answers to the big questions.”

  “You want to avoid studying.”

  The school was almost completely emptied and the last train would be arriving soon. If she didn’t want to end up walking home, she was going to have to deal with this. Nip it in the bud. Glenn put her tablet down and faced him.

  “Nothing changed after the Rift.”

  “But — ”

  “Conspiracy theories.”

  “Conspiracy?! What about trans light — ”

  “Trans-light-speed travel was inevitable.”

  “The breakthrough was right after the Rift!”

  He had been reading the Rifter websites again. Glenn would have bet hard money that if she took his tablet from him, she’d see a long list of sites like rifttruth, riftlies, therealworld. It was amazing that people were still harping on stuff like that after over a hundred years.

  “‘Post hoc,’” Glenn recited, “‘ergo propter hoc.’”

  “‘After this, therefore because of this.’ I know the fallacy, Morgan. I swear, sometimes you think I’m a moron. If it was one thing, that would be fine. But it’s everything. Trans-light travel. Cold fusion.

  Bioengineering. It all happened after the Rift.”

  “I’d like to refer you to the earlier fallacy.”

  Kevin dropped his tablet and shifted so he was sitting squarely in front of Glenn. He leaned in and fixed her with kohl-lined eyes framed in thick wisps of blue from his fallen Mohawk. There was barely a foot of air between them. Glenn leaned away from him, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them close.

  “So what about the mutants?” he asked. “People have seen them on the other side of the border. There’s video — ”

  “There’s no video — ”

  “- of these, like, wolf people. And bird people! Bird people, Morgan!”

  Glenn tossed her tablet into her bag and stood up. “Yeah. I heard they found Atlantis over there too. And aliens! Forget it. I’m outta here.”