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continued from p. 23
We’re living in a Time, aren’t we?
“A Crooked Piece of Time”
May we all keep leaping and lapping up
Water brooks in the woods with
Our dear baby Hart.
Semantics in the Pause
By Kathryn Kyker
Blasting those astronauts up to the space station was
just enough of a blip to cause the Subito, just passing by,
to circle back and fall to the Earth, the way a murmuration
of starlings whirls and twirls and plummets to your yard,
filling it with their cacophonous chatter—so loud, so vora
cious that reality shifts as your world goes helter-skelter.
That’s how it was for me. I thought maybe I had the virus
and that was why my world was all Twilight Zone. This
could be a fevered dream of the dying.
Last thing I recalled was making a cup of tea when I
heard something and stepped outside.
Something unseen was there. The whirring softened, or
maybe I just grew more accustomed to it. But I was differ
ent, less solid. My tea was sludge-like. “Are you the virus?”
I asked.
The Pause happened in spring. We didn’t antic- ^
ipate all the changes that pausing would bring. g
Most of us were unfamiliar with a disruption of 5
this magnitude. Hugs stopped first; then schools 3
stopped. We quit going out. For some of us, work
stopped. Sports, music, traveling—all those
pursuits we wrap ourselves in—if they no longer
existed—did we?
As the students were told to stay away, the
town of Athens gave a great involuntary shudder,
ripples racing down the streets, uprooting busi
nesses or swallowing them whole.
It was not just life events that paused, but life
itself, the thrum of humanity’s heartbeat. That’s
why time is different now. Because now is differ
ent now. I would say obtuse, but I recently learned
(learning is still possible in the Pause) that it’s
abstruse, and my inability to grasp it makes me an
obtuse Quiescent—capitalized because they have
made it a proper noun. It is their name for us.
I thought they meant sentient, so I corrected
them, but they insisted they’d found it on the
saurus.com. They read the definition—well, not
“read” in the usual sense, but I could hear the
definition in the whirring scream that wrapped
my body. (Quiescent: at rest; quiet; inactive.) I
didn’t bother telling them that it was an adjec
tive. Adjectives no longer matter, and I’m not fit
to be the grammar police on my best day. Besides,
the less conversation the better, because of that
whirring screaming.
From their perspective, humans are now
static, frozen, or at least sloth-like in their ambu
lation. Humanity itself was paused. “They” are what I call
the Subito. (Subito: sudden, abrupt, as in musical direction.)
I can use thesaurus.com, too.
Our space program was not paused, and that is what
caught their... they don’t have eyes, so I’ll say attention.
The whirring shaped itself into a reprimand—surely I
recalled that the virus came well before their invasion—
their visit. They emphasized their correction and added that
only I heard them and responded to their arrival, whereas
other Quiescents continued in their hibernation unaware.
I blame the weather—the collision of cold and warm
fronts created some sort of flue to my backyard. If we
weren’t living in the time of the Pause, the weather would
resume as the most bizarre thing about our current exis
tence (excluding politicians).
I admit that I’m pro-space despite the risk of this very
thing. So I guess it serves me right?
They aren’t just in my yard. They have no container. This
information might cause widespread paranoia, but I don’t
think my words will ever reach the Quiescent world.
I do not ambulate as I once did. I never drank that tea.
If they saw us outside of the Pause, would all our usual
scurrying impress them? Probably not—I suspect all life
forms come with species-istic attitudes.
They will leave with their nettlesome whirring. I will be
lost in the numbers of the departed, as you remain in Pause
mode. I believe you and the town will awaken soon. “Soon”
being relative to your space-time perception.
We perceive time in the Pause like being out of sync,
because we are doing creatures instead of being creatures,
or that is my current theory. I get to experience time differ
ently with the Subito but I would rather be paused with all
of you.
I don’t know what my life—existence will be like, but I
am bringing earplugs on the chance that I still have ears.
How I Made It
Through 2020
By Jill Hartmann-Roberts
Warm knitted socks
At the end of the day.
Steaming almond lattes
At sunrise.
Soft, furry blankets enfolding me.
Sunlight on my face,
Beaming through window panes,
Seeping into my skin.
Photographs,
Videos,
Old memories from long ago.
Tony Bennett,
Nat King Cole,
Frank Sinatra
Streaming through a smartphone.
Soaking in the tub,
Sweet birch scent,
Drifting off to sleep.
Books long sitting on the shelf,
Untouched and unread,
m
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