A Beginning is a Very Delicate Time
“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.”
Eliot, George. (1876). Daniel Deronda. William Blackwood and Sons.
Jacob sighed heavily and flexed his fists, alternatively clenching his hands into a tight ball and then releasing his grip with fingers outstretched to the limits of their pliancy. Again: a deep intake of breath followed by the sibilant hiss of exhaled air through pursed lips. This was supposed to relief stress. It didn't work. His feet pounded rhythmically, legs on autopilot moving a bit too fast for his less-than-physically-fit constitution. Sweat began to pool on his forehead. His heart thudded painfully in his ears and throat.
Had a fifteen-year-old boy ever before endured such a miserable day in the history of the universe? Was it nature or nurture that had made him such a loser? Skinny, blond Ashley, his older sister, seemed to live a charmed life. So the fault that he was such a failure, Jacob told himself, is not in his genes but in himself. And now the walk home from school accorded Jacob time to reflect: to torture himself with an instant replay of the day's horror.
Mrs. Williams gave him a C- on a math exam, even after he'd actually studied hard for a change. Jacob's archnemesis, that pimply-faced bully Josh Miller, had tripped him in the lunch line, resulting in an humiliating slip and subsequent food-splattered fall in front of a cluster of mocking cheerleaders. Then Jacob had gotten into a big fight with his best friend Matt over some stupid party this weekend being hosted by uppity rich girl Hannah Robinson. Matt wanted them both to attend – safety in numbers – but Jacob, petrified with typical adolescent social insecurity, had adamantly refused. He and Matt were both teenage pariahs: too clumsy and flabby for sports; too gawky and timid for girls; too consumed with science fiction, comic books, and video games to ever pass for normal in proper high school society. The only difference between the two was that Matthew Brown was an eternal optimist, refusing to acquiesce to a life sentence in the geekosphere. Jacob Smith, on the other hand, knew himself for the shy, fat, nerdsome loser he was. Unpleasant as it may be, acceptance of these facts was preferable for him to the inevitable pain that came from playing the role of social upstart – an adolescent arriviste doomed to certain rejection at the hands of the “beautiful people.”
Approaching home, still guided by the muscle memory in his legs, Jacob looked up from the rough, concrete sidewalk and saw the two Johnson girls from next door, now out in their front lawn in the gentle, slant of afternoon sunlight. Jacob had long nursed an unspoken and therefor unrequited crush on ginger-haired, green-eyed Emily with her heart-meltingly winsome smile and pretty, easygoing style. Conversely, younger sister Kaitlyn Johnson wore her own fiery crown of crimson hair as a powerful sign of otherness: content and confident in her peculiarity, and proud to be the neighborhood weirdo. Quite a pair, the Johnson sisters were. A double-edged sword: Jacob both loved and despised having grown up next to such a fascinating duo.
“Hi, Jay!” Emily called out in her dulcet mezzo-soprano voice.
She was the only person on planet Earth to call Jacob “Jay.” As a private pet name, it was pleasant, playful, and personal – but that was the limit of any intimacy between the two. Nevertheless, Jacob forced a smile on his careworn face and nervously tried to smooth back the greasy, black kiss curl on his perspiration drenched forehead. His mom also said it made him look like Superman. He'd always disagreed and found it made him look like Clark Kent. What a difference an alter ego makes! If only Jacob had one.
“Hi, Emily!” Jacob replied in a nervous, cracked voice. “Whatchya up to?”
She must have rushed home from school, because Emily Johnson was now dressed to the nines (at least in Jacob's adolescent opinion). No longer in the relatively plain attire she'd had on at school, Emily was now wearing a high-waisted black skater skirt, a hunter green crop top, black 40 denier tights, and a pair of black biker booties with shiny, burnished gold buckles on the sides. She was beautiful.
Once upon a time, as young children who knew little of (and cared even less about) gender differences, Jacob and Emily had been the best of friends. Post-puberty Jacob had been usurped in that role by gabby, gossipy Madison Davis: a frivolous, frilly, airheaded sylph with an avid interest in nothing but fashion, cosmetics, pop music, and “hot” boys. She was the one who'd recently introduced Emily to Michael Jones: Emily's beau of the moment. Between Madison and Michael, Emily rarely had more than a moment of innocent, idle chit-chat to share with her quondam playmate.
“She's got a date with Michael,” chirped nearby Kaitlyn in a sarcastic sing-song that dripped with undisguised scorn.
At least Jacob wasn't the only one who hated Emily's boyfriend.
“Hush and go back to your digging!” Emily snapped at her thirteen-year old sibling.
That's when Jacob noticed the latest bizarre behavior Kaitlyn was engaged in. When she wasn't obsessively teaching herself organic chemistry, inventing new languages, or flying a kite in the middle of the night, she was clambering about perched haphazardly on neighborhood rooftops, singing songs to butterflies, or trying to forge copies of famous impressionist paintings. Today was no exception in the Kaitlyn parade of eccentricities. At the moment, Emily's precocious, freckle-faced sister, clad in overall shorts and an “Attack on Titan” t-shirt, was busily excavating a semi-circular cavity in the Johnson family's front yard.
“What is …” Jacob started to ask.
“She's looking for the 'Doughnut of Distortion' or some such garbage she's dreamed up,” replied Emily curtly, clearly embarrassed once again by her sibling's routinely outrageous behavior.
“I said it's the Toroid of Transformation. It generates a revolution in the surface of reality. Space-time for the user is spun, passing through an invisible axis of revolution that fails to intersect the user's own, actual timeline. That's crucial. Now, transformation occurs, indistinguishable from magic, when the fabric of reality is thus rotated about that axis,” Kaitlyn blathered breathlessly. “It came to me in a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. I saw it when I slept. It's real, you know, but it isn't native to our world. The Toroid is an artifact of great power, a pseudomagical ring constructed by techno-wizards from an alternate timeline that co-exists in a shadow parallel structure with our own plane. It was lost and traveled to our frame of existence long ago, where it has remained buried …”
“In, of all places, our very own front lawn,” snapped Emily, rolling her eyes. “Nice coincidence there, Kaitlyn.”
“Look, you're free to waste time with that meat-head lunk of a boyfriend,” retorted Kaitlyn. “So, give me the freedom to explore the more weighty issues of the space-time continuum and the ramifications of reality-bending magic.”
Jacob tuned out the rest of Kaitlyn's technobabble speech and let his eyes rest easy on pretty Emily, dressed up to impress her date. If only it was Jacob himself she was waiting for. If only he'd been the one to take her out on a date. He'd never had the courage to ask. Pathetic he knew. But, still, a boy could daydream, couldn't he?
“Kaitlyn, get in this house this minute!” came the shrill, angry voice of Mrs. Johnson, now standing in the front door. “I'm not going to have another parent-teacher conference about you failing tests and falling behind in your homework. You've got a backlog of schoolwork to get to – move it inside, wash those filthy hands of yours, and get in your room studying. Now, missy!”
Emily smirked and mouthed a silent good-bye to her sister, now making a petulant, adagio march towards the house.
“Sisters, eh? You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family,” said Emily with a shrug as Kaitlyn finally disappeared through the front door of the Johnson family home.
Jacob smiled weakly and leaned over to glance down into the concavity Kaitlyn had constructed in the dirt.
“Hey – there actually is something here,” he said, peering closer.
“She probably hit a water pipe or gas line,” sighed Emily.
Jacob peered down for a closer look. A lunula of dull, seafoam green metal was protruding slightly out from the loose soil at the bottom of Kaitlyn's recently dug hole. Scratching about in the dirt for a moment, Jacob soon unearthed a solid metal ring about the size of his palm. It was heavily tarnished with a verdigris patina suggesting a composition of copper or bronze. A series of almost microscopic rivets encircled the ring, holding together an delicate pattern of tiny interlocking squares and rectangles that made up the object's surface. Other than that, there was nothing to it – it was simply a weirdly shaped chunk of badly corroded metal.
“My sister the crackpot,” grumbled Emily. “As usual, she had to be right.”
“You don't really think this is a magic doughnut from a parallel universe of steampunk sorcerers, do you?” laughed Jacob. “It looks more like a busted-off piece of an old boiler or furnace. Maybe something from an antique locomotive. I'm sure there's a logical explanation for whatever this gizmo is.”
“I don't know and I don't care, Jay,” sighed Emily impatiently. “Just please take it back to your house and don't tell Kaitlyn anything about it. By tomorrow, she'll have developed some new mania, and then whatever-this-is can be thrown in the garbage.”
Jacob said nothing and looked down at the ugly, green ring of corroded metal in his hand. If only this really were an object of unspeakable power, he thought. If only this weren't just a lump of badly-tarnished dreck. If only it were from another dimension, and had magic transformative abilities, and … if only it had the power to … to … change Jacob and his life … to make everything different.