Our Summer Fiction Excerpt: An Ocean of Minutes

In Thea Lim’s new novel, a flu pandemic is devastating the United States. Life-saving treatments can be purchased — but only in exchange for a trip to the future where bonded labour awaits. Nonetheless, when her boyfriend Frank falls ill, Polly is determi

The psychologist uses a blood-pressure cuff, then a stethoscope. Polly’s heart is still speeding from the broken planter, and how easily the guards sub- dued that woman, like they were folding a piece of paper.

“If I fail the evaluation,” Polly says, “do I still have to pay the processing fee?”

“Yes. So don’t fail the evaluation.” She flips a page. “Full name, age, and birth date?”

“Polly Nader, 23, June 12th, 1958.”

“And you’re travelling to Galveston at September 4th, 1993. Your ethnicity? Nader — what is that? Jewish?” “I’m Caucasian.” The psychologist peers at her. “What kind of Cauca- sian?” She puts her cheek on her fist and stares until Polly says, She habit. that for. she’s “And But only usually hiding “My extraneous It’s your now left complicated father something. no mother?” this it one information must was out has Arab.” to seem from time explain, but says, ... let’s “Caucasian.” Polly’s then “So just you windpipe keep the look woman things white. clenches, simple. Okay only I’ll and put weight?” ‘Caucasian.’ Height

“Five “Hair foot colour five, and 125 pounds.” eye colour: brown and brown.”

The psychologist opens Polly’s briefcase and uses a white spatula with blue felt on its tip to sift her papers. She’s cautious, like a person hand- ling evidence, then Polly real- izes she is just that. She finds Polly’s baseball cards.

“What’s this?” Rollie Fin- gers looks preposterously out of place.

“I thought they might be worth money in the future.”

There are two versions to this story. The truer version is that the cards are travelling with her because they belong to Frank; they have the synec- dochical magic of a beloved’s beloveds. But she thinks the psychologist will be more likely to comprehend the of- ficial, pragmatic version. This backfires. “Then technically I should confiscate them.”

What Polly would like to do best is put her head between her knees. But that would be a sign of weakness, and it’s clear that here, things go poorly for the soft.

“Aren’t there special con- siderations for me, because I have an O-1 visa?”

Simpson regards her with drawn-together brows. Then she laughs.

“You know what? You keep the baseball cards. What does it matter, really? I don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know where you’re going. Makes the rules seem arbi- trary, form, formation a should we’ve woman ing Her these saying, negotiator. Simpson “I to shoes! like you old leave had those copying because see had Don’t know?” biddies your on today. And her the shoes to scribbles Polly’s My be worry she down shoes there style. basket around Just forcibly won’t was God, visa. were behind. the sweetheart, now, You’re in refus- cases even you her, the in- removed all a be It way. sentimental from but who was in we And can’t her fashion comical, can’t the mother. even invest shoes value. in in get the Touching, a in only through morbid future. people A had gift customs. photos.” light,” “They she I said see says you photo happily. even paper travel “No would most “Sure, travellers. be but damaged that Unless doesn’t in travel.” Rollie stop Fingers answering Polly is shakes your the boyfriend.” question her head ser- no, iously, Now just that in case. the woman is asks inclined in a high, towards watchful her, voice, Polly “Do or get medical a lot of people treatment travel for to a friend or family member with the flu?” “Isn’t that the draw? That basic survival.” “I was wondering if you knew what strategies are most successful? For meet-ups?” “What’s a meet-up?” “When people try to find each other again? Once they arrive?” “Oh, a meet-up. I see. You know, I have no idea. No meetups have ever happened.” “No one has ever been suc- cessfully reunited with some- one they left behind?” “Literally speaking. Chronologically. It’s never happened before. The first travellers aren’t scheduled to arrive for another 12 years. But I can give you a contact form. Would you like a contact form?” “Yes. What’s a contact form?” Simpson removes a sheet from the back of her clipboard. “Write down the name and number of anyone you’d like to keep abreast of your changing travel plans. It’s in case of reroutements. In case your services are deemed more useful in a different time.” “Reroutements? I thought that was just a rumour.” Just like that, with the slightest lift of her voice, Polly lets slip her weak spot. Wariness slides into the psycholo- gist’s expression. They can’t afford another basket case. “Don’t you worry about that,” Simpson says. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You won’t be rerouted. It would say, if you were going to be. Somewhere in here, it would say.” She makes a show of riffling through Polly’s file. “Can you sign the statement now?”

“I don’t have a phone number for him yet. He’s on his way to the hospital now.” “Which hospital?”

“St. Luke’s.”

“Great, good.” The psychologist takes back the contact form and writes St Luke’s. “Can you sign this statement now? It just says you agree to the terms. There’s others to get to.” The psychologist touches her bare wrist, as if she is wearing a watch.

Polly finds herself pinching the pads of her fingers, one by one. Their Saturdays-inSeptember idea is suddenly sickening. It is like a plan a mother would make to keep from losing her children on a subway. It’s a plan able to withstand early-closing doors and a snarl of stairways, not the ocean of minutes that 12 years holds. But uselessly, her mind has gone blank. Strange, random thoughts wander into the empty space. Is it dinner time? She is entering a world where the notion of something as normal as dinner time does not exist.

“Should you wish to break your contract now, I can set you up with a repayment plan for the associated costs plus the 13 per cent that you’ll owe us. Otherwise, I need you to sign this final statement saying you are prepared for travel.”

It was then that Polly began to experience a feeling of dislocation that did not leave her for many months. The pen in her hand and the paper on the table appeared far away, like she was watching them on a movie screen. I’ll see him in just a few hours, my time. This time tomorrow, he’ll be waiting for me. We can still have a baby. The happy weight in my arms.

She heard the psychologist say, “TimeRaiser is a good company. We’ll protect you. Today, or rather tomorrow, is the first day of the rest of your life. It’s a gift.”

On that movie screen, the hand drew ballpoint loops on the line: her own signature. That was almost the last thing she remembered of the whole trip. When she met other travellers in the future, she could not remember the sort of details they wanted to trade, because they were details that came after the paper was signed. Which gate did she leave from? Which class was the boat? Was she put in a lie-down seat or a sit-up one? Did she wear a radiation-protection apron or blanket? Shop talk was a way to divvy up what they’d endured without actually talking about it.

She could not remember the recording, played right as she pitched into a many-year sleep. A tender voice told of Polly being past the point of return and hence authorized to hear the story of the future that was waiting, how the tiny but intrepid TimeRaiser — Texas born and bred! — had endeavoured to prevent the pandemic by inventing time travel, and when that didn’t work, they did not relent, but tamed the flu by snatching carriers from right under its nose.

The last thing she remembered was this: when she was left alone in the last holding area, she finally located the snag in her bra. It was not underwire. It was a photograph Frank had tucked into the padding pouch. It was of the two of them at New Year’s, confetti strands in their hair. Her aunt Donna had set the zoom too close and each of them had an ear missing. On the back, Frank had written, Something to remember us by.

She couldn’t explain what she did next. Polly flipped the photo over and folded it in half. And then she tore it up. She pressed the shards between the pages of her Travel Handbook and put it all in a garbage can in the corner.

Afterwards, she tried to console herself by imagining that horror had distilled her down to her most animal self, who had no use for photos — she had been out of her mind. But the truth was that she did it because Frank believed they needed props, aids, to remember each other. He believed the possibility of a future timeline in which she could forget him. This was intolerable.

She would regret this always. It would sit like a bubble in her lungs. Even if the travel had wiped it blank, she would still wish she owned the piece of paper that had housed the outline of his face, with the ruts his writing made in the back, where he had written his message without signing his name.

When the pod unsealed and they climbed out of the time machine, the light struck them like a blunt force. Their skin was burning, their nostrils about to rupture, their eyeballs to burst. People were screaming and weeping and Polly heard her own voice, severed from her body, crying about her eyes.

She was on a gurney. They tied a plastic bag around her neck so she would stop getting sick down her front and they put a strap around her chest just to measure her heartbeat, though it felt as if they were tying her down. A serene voice was speaking to no one in particular and Polly caught the words “side effects” and “normal” and “subside,” but the voice soothed nobody.

She kept trying to sit up to reassure herself she wasn’t restrained, until they cuffed her wrist to the bed. They forced her to drink a sweet gelatinous liquid and she threw up again. She was crying and apologizing and someone was holding her head.

“Frank?” she asked. Everything in the terminal had been rebuilt on a petrifying scale, curved windows like tsunamis of glass, and she had to shut her eyes or she’d upset herself again.

“Is Frank one of the nurses?” someone said.

“I’m supposed to be at the airport. I have to get to the airport.”

“You’re at the airport.” “Which airport?” “Houston Intercontinental Airport.”

“Okay.” She relaxed against the restraints.

A second later, she grasped that this wasn’t everything she needed to know. “Hello? Hello?” she shouted. Nobody came. “What year is it? Is it 1993?” Polly couldn’t move her head, her skull was pinned down, she could only see the ceiling. It was not like her to be so visibly needy, all her insides on the outside. Even her own self was foreign.

Someone in another bed, who was even more confused than she, said, “1981.”

Polly tried again for someone in charge. “What year is it? Please?”

Finally, an official replied, “It’s nineteen ninety—” then the last number was garbled. “It’s 1993?”

“I said nineteen ninety—” “It’s 1993?” she mewed. The world started to revolve and she cried out, until she realized someone was turning her gurney.

“See for yourself,” the voice said.

Now she was facing the exit. A digital clock in the ceiling said 5:17 p.m.

“What is it?” she heard herself say.

“It’ll show the date. You have to wait till it clicks over.”

And then it clicked. Like a red neon portent, the clock pulsed September and 4 and the numbers 1 9 9 8.

Excerpted from An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim. Copyright © 2018 by Thea Lim. Published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher.

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