Do you know what the moon is made of?" That's the first question asked of the bound captive, whose answer could mean the difference between life and death—for him. Is his captor a genius or a psychopath…or perhaps something far worse?

Find out in Gordon's story The Mirror which featured in the April 2005 issue of WildChild Magazine.

I could hear my wife puttering in the kitchen, humming sweetly as she worked. The gentle tinkling of metal forks and knives and spoons registered on my ears even through the action on the screen. My son looked up at me, a smile spreading hugely. “What a shot, Dad,” he said. “Did you see it?”

I smiled down at him, the movement feeling awkward and stiff.

“Yes,” I said. “I saw. It was great.” My voice sounded alien and old to me, as though I hadn’t spoken a word in a thousand years and my vocal cords had grown brittle and raw. Tommy noticed something was different, and his smile faltered, I could see it in his eyes, that questioning look that I had seen so many times before.

“You okay, dad?” he asked.

I wanted to make the smile real but the muscles and tendons were still so odd to me I was afraid that it might turn into a grimace that would scare Tommy even worse. So I left the smile as it was and nodded slowly.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I was just thinking about something at work. I’m okay though, and it was a great shot.”

I saw the wheels working behind those young eyes, but there was drawing and basketball and he quickly accepted what I had said and turned back to both. I wished my mind could be distracted so easily.

“Dinner in ten minutes, boys,” called my wife, from the kitchen. Her voice was as melodic as her humming and I longed to know her better.

“Okay, Mom,” answered Tommy for the both of us, saving me from having to use my strange voice again.

Karen, her name was Karen. It came to me all at once and I remembered that she wore a white lace nightgown to bed every night and that we met in high school and I proposed to her after a lobster dinner and an hour of dancing and that she smiled just before she kissed me.

The crowd cheered on the TV as a three point shot was made and I felt an instant of excitement that hadn’t been there a moment before. It was my old college team that scored, and the pride still ran deep. I grinned down at Tommy as he turned toward me and this time the smile was real. We slapped a high five and I clapped him on the shoulder and then tousled his hair. It was coming fast now and the knowledge terrified me, but the fear was down deep, buried in the living and the reality of the moment.

My name was George Harding and I was a geological engineer for... for… ahhh there it was... for Lode Star Oil. I received my masters from The Colorado School of Mines and I have enough seniority at Lode Star to only have to leave the country about twice a year.

I could feel the basketball game tap into my adrenaline, trying to seduce me with old memories and primal allegiance, but I didn’t care about the game or work or even dinner, although I felt my saliva glands kick in and my stomach growl at the thought of Karen’s spaghetti. But I was growing accustomed to awakening from Blank Time and knew enough to get straight to the truly important things in life, the relationships.

“Time to eat,” called Karen.

Tommy jumped up and started for the kitchen but I stopped him, standing in his way. I hugged him to me, tight, smelling his little boy’s hair and feeling the solid weight of his changing body. I remembered holding him in my arms when he was a newborn and swaying him to sleep, his baby breath so fresh and sweet and new.

He hugged me back, and then pulled away, looking up at me again. I couldn’t help the tears that shined my eyes even though I fought them with all my might.

“I’m okay,” I said, stopping the question before he could ask. “Let’s go eat.”

We turned for the kitchen and there was Karen. She was a little heavier than when we had first met and there were creases turning to wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and stretching the corners of her lips when she smiled. There were little flashes of silver that stitched the roots of her hair and she was more beautiful than ever before.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I clutched her to my chest. She felt so right in my arms. I could tell my behavior was causing her some alarm but I was helpless. I wept into her neck and kissed the soft skin at her shoulder. A day, I prayed silently. Just one day, please… But when I opened my eyes Karen was gone.


In her place was a pretty girl wearing a white lab coat. A nametag with the moniker “Mary” stenciled on its faceplate hung from a clip fastened to her right breast pocket. A stethoscope hung casually around her neck, draping her shoulders. Mary smiled at me and raised her eyebrows as though waiting for an answer. I could hardly move my lips, let alone answer any question she might have just asked.

It was always like this at first. Blank Time was just that. The blankness from one life to another. That space of time between being and becoming.

“Well?” asked Mary, the smile still in place. “Is the culture positive or not?”

Looking around I saw the microscope in front of me. I was sitting on a stool in front of a desk laden with medical supplies and instruments.

My own nametag read, “Bob” and at the sight of it memories started to sift through me. The word “intern” bubbled to the surface and my neck jerked suddenly and I had a measure of control.

“You okay, Bob?” she asked, the smile growing quirky.

My mother’s name was Sarah and she lived in Nebraska.

“I’m fine,” I managed to get out, and the voice was low and calm and perhaps a bit nervous. “Just had a brain fade,” I covered. I could feel my arms and legs coming under my control.

Tommy’s face flashed behind my eyes and I felt his loss like a crushing blow. My wife, my son, I would never see them again. Of course they weren’t really mine, or at least they hadn’t been, but it didn’t feel that way.

“Bob, are you… crying?”

I tried to turn to the side but the messages from my brain to my body were still slowed by Blank Time’s effect. I swiped at my face, my fingers coming away wet.

Mary’s hand lightly gripped my shoulder and there was worried concern in her voice.

“What is it? Are you having a heart attack, a stroke?” She was standing now, reaching for the phone.

The feel of Karen’s skin as my lips kissed her shoulder… never to see her again. My wife, my son…

But already the new identity was trying to press in on me. Bob, I’m Bob, not George. But George and his life had taken me hard and Bob was having trouble pushing them aside. It was like that sometimes, usually only when I stayed for a longer period of time, a week, or a month, a couple of times over a year, never more than that. But Karen and Tommy had been so strong, their life filled with so much love. If only I could have stayed, if only… but Blank Time was unpredictable. At times I would flash from one person to another like a card deck being shuffled, barely gaining a hold on the host before blanking to a new reality.

Mary had the phone now and I managed to dig the palms of my hands into my eyes, trying to hold back my emotions by physical force. I heard Mary punching numbers on the phone and then it was gone. I pulled my hands away and opened my eyes.


At first I wasn’t sure my eyes were really open at all. The dark of the night pressed in from all sides and it took several seconds to adjust. When I did I saw two men lying across from me beside each other in a shallow pit that was surrounded by rocks. I shivered, seeing my breath float away in the wind, a silver mist standing out in the dark. Inside, my heart bled, deep in the seat of my soul, for Tommy and Karen and the life that was no longer mine.

I moved an arm that felt wrong; it was a different weight, a different thickness, different musculature and hardness. But it responded, sluggish but up it came, stretching fingers tingling with new life, and feeling the coarse hair of an unkempt beard. The chin beneath the beard was not yet mine, making it feel as if I were touching someone else’s face. Odd and unpleasant but not so strange that it gave me pause. Thoughts of Tommy tried to invade my consciousness but I pushed them away and concentrated on the here and now.

In the distance there was a rumble that grew like raging thunder and the ground actually shook. I could feel the dirt and sharp pebbles shift beneath me. One of the men opened his eyes and smiled at me. He spoke but the thunderous sound drowned him out. I tried to shake my head, but the muscles weren’t responding yet. Instead I held up both hands, chest high and palms out. He nodded and waited until the roar rolled past us.

“I said it sounds like God’s fist, no?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, and the words that came out of my mouth were a different language than the words I had spoken for Karen. “The fist of an angry God!” My voice was stronger than George’s voice, younger, with a trace of fire that seemed to blaze from within. I felt an affiliation to the voice almost immediately and then the rough texture of the garment I was wearing scraped against my neck and I began to gain control of the muscles of my body.
   
The lonely sound of rifles splintered the night. I heard a crack, then another, then a long pause and a quick burst of five, and then silence echoed slowly past me.

Joseph smiled at me again, a wide gap between his front teeth.

“The quiet is almost worse,” he said.

I nodded, my neck feeling stiff and leathery but loosening with each passing moment.

I became aware of something on my head and realized I was wearing a helmet. Joseph was not wearing one and neither was the other man… I couldn’t pull his name forward yet, but then I saw the helmets lying beside them like overturned roly-poly bugs. I took mine off and looked inside. The helmet was equipped with suspension straps and a radio microphone and receiver. The cold of the night attacked my sweaty hair, sending new shivers running through my body.

“You look like your hair is on fire,” said Joseph. He laughed, pointing at me. “Your head looks like the burning bush!”

I grinned, the face still not fully mine, but information growing in leaps and bounds. I knew my name, my rank, my girl friend’s name and…

Joseph grabbed for me as I stood up, missing my sleeve by inches.

“No!” he yelled.

“What…?” I started to say, but then I knew, it was a war zone and the steam from my hair made me an easy target even in the dark. The Blank Time had deadened my senses too much, stalled my knowledge too long.

There was a horrible smack at the base of my skull and pain exploded through my mind. I hit the hard dirt floor of the foxhole face first, my nose mashing and lips tearing. I felt warmth flowing down my shoulders and cheeks and pooling on either side of my face.

Did I get him killed? Surely Sgt. Abram Moshe would know better than to stand up and give his enemies such a clear target as I had just done. But perhaps it wasn’t too late, maybe I was just wounded. But no, the pain was too severe, the blood pouring out too fast. I could feel Joseph grabbing me, turning me over, and I saw the stars overhead, so far away. So cold, like the Blank Time. That instant between one life and another, less than a second, an impulse, a thought, yet seeming to last a thousand life times. With no rhyme or reason or even a hint at how long I would stay in the new life I had entered.

The other soldier was helping now, I still didn’t know his name, but he was ripping open a bandage, his hands already smeared with my blood. Joseph was crying, his words running together turning them into a jumble my pounding ears couldn’t unscramble. I tried to reach up to him, but my arms were numb, not the numbness of the Blank Time but rather the numbness of death. I could feel it coming for me now, rushing like a great wind. I prayed that it would reach me before the Blank Time, so that I could rest finally and move on to whatever there was to move on too. And if there was nothing, then so be it. Even non-existence was better than the total existence of Blank Time, living forever the lives of others. Taking on their thoughts and memories, their feelings and emotions. Loving and hating and losing, time and again. Months turning into years, into decades, into centuries, into millennia. But now it was here; death and its welcome release. Please.

I felt a last pain, squeezing in on my mind and then my heart stopped. I felt it stop. It thumped one last time and then was still. And my eyes fixed, staring at the cold stars, and a glaze of darkness began to close in, blocking out the light. Sounds stretched out, muffled and distorted until there was nothing left but a shadowy hum that was the opposite of white noise. And…

Nothing.

I wait, still, for how long now? How can I know? There is nothing. No light, no sound, no taste or smell or touch. Am I even still in Abram’s body? Or am I floating adrift? Alone!

I had thought, in my ignorance, that nothing could be worse than Blank Time and its patch-quilt memories, but I was so wrong.

This is worse, existence apart from everything else with only my fear to keep me company.

My only hope, my only prayer, is that Blank Time has not yet come for me, rather than having already abandoned me completely and forever. For if this is death eternal, then I am in hell. Please, let it only be the calm, before the storm of Blank Time returns.

Slowly I close my eyes, and pray that when I open them…