Summary: by John Chu Read by Joel Kenyon Links for this episode: Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… John designs microprocessors by day and writes fiction by night. His work has been published at Boston Review, Asimov’s and Tor.com. His website is http://johnchu.net Joel Kenyon About the Narrator… Joel Kenyon is a veteran podcaster, writer, musician and artist. He’s currently a member of the 4 man comedy show, The Undercover Unitards and he also has a weekly independant music show called The Sunshine Happy Kpants Hour. When he’s not recording, he writes a movie review blog, occasionally draws an online comic, paints pictures, writes stories and attempts to make music with friends. Joel is not a fan, however, of writing in the third person perspective, so writing this bio was painful for him. Find him at: undercoverunitards.com, talkshoe.com/tc/113349, AMomentaryLapseWithJoel.blogspot.com or GregoryRobot.blogspot.com Thirty Seconds from Now by John Chu One second from now, the bean bag will thunk into Scott’s left palm. From reflex, his fingers will wrap around it before he’ll toss it back up again. The trick of juggling lies not in the catch but in the toss. The bean bag will arc up from his right hand, but Scott sees his left hand blur now. Phantom left hands at the few places his left hand may be one second from now overlap with each other, and with his real left hand about a foot above the cold tile floor he’s sitting on. The same holds for the phantom bean bags. They overlap each other and the result looks nearly as cubic, red, and solid in the air, stark against the dorm room’s blank walls, as the bean bag does right now resting in Scott’s right hand. He’s making a good toss. This catch will be easy. His three bean bag cascade looks to him the way he imagines it must look to anyone else, well, if they were near-sighted and missing their glasses. When he makes a bad toss, translucent Scotts scatter across the room. They reach for the beds on either side of him, lunge for his or his roommate’s desk, and dive over his bed for the closet. They all stretch for the myriad translucent bean bags raining from the stucco ceiling. The bean bags threaten to knock over the desk lamps, bury themselves in the acting textbooks that line his closet shelf and smack against the window blinds. A desperate enough toss and a phantom bean bag may fly through the doorway into the hall. He does not need his time-skewed senses to know he will eventually make a bad toss. As hard as he tries to keep his sight solid, to make his life predictable, he will drop a bean bag. That’s why he’s sitting on the floor. It’s easier to pick up dropped bean bags that way. # Five seconds from now, someone will walk past the open door of his dorm room. Scott doesn’t recognize him. He’s just arrived at the university and can barely recognize his roommate, a long-haired rail of a man who left him to eat breakfast in the basement cafeteria. The man who will walk past the door is about the same height as the bulletin board across from Scott’s room. His thick body will block what he’s posting from view. His dark hair will lie on his head like a mane. Looking at the man’s back, Scott sees a rounded teddy bear quality to him. What attracts Scott, though, is the man’s clarity. Scott can read the man’s t-shirt. It lists films the Department of Media Studies screened at a festival this past summer. Five distinct fingers will splay to hold his flyer in place as the other hand pushes pins into the cork. His actions show none of the uncertainty, the blurriness that everyone else’s shows. It’s been years since anyone has looked so clear to him. The future is messy. Scott’s senses feed him all possible[...]
