By Jane McCarthy

There’s a child missing. A boy.

From time itself.

That’s what Luke said.

“Children don’t just vanish,” I told him, sitting at my kitchen table sipping coffee.

“Actually, they do, and may the Earl Grey be with you,” he replied, while looking with confusion at my coffee cup. “Waffles have do you?”

Just over a month ago, Luke James had landed in the apartment upstairs. Baseball cap that he never takes off. Gloves, also. Thick, old-man glasses, despite his youth. Smiling at everything. Talking like he memorized speeches from motivational seminars. Quoting movies and shows we both love. A little too enthusiastic about mailboxes, toaster waffles, and my wheelchair. The waffles never seem to agree with him, but he insists on eating them anyway.

Weird. The kind of weird that quickly grew on me. It felt good having a fellow sci-fi geek living upstairs to binge watch with.

He made a real effort to introduce himself and get to know everyone on the block. The neighborhood kids like him. They wave from their driveways when he passes, and he salutes back. They say he teaches them Klingon, wears a cool wristwatch, and talks to birds.

But one of those neighborhood kids is missing. Davin.

Ten. Fast runner. Threw rocks at trains. Vanished walking home from the corner shop.

No one saw him disappear. No one knows anything. Just that he was last seen walking past the alley next to the bakery.

Except Luke knows something.

He rang my doorbell at three a.m., holding a mug that read “#1 Earthling.”

“Time doesn’t break,” he tells me now. “Sometimes it just… skips. Like your vinyl with a scratch.” Luke nods like I’ve agreed. “Here still he is. Just not here-here.”

Despite the hour, Luke insists we boldly go to the alley. “That feel do you?” he asks. “That’s wrong. Fractured.”

At the end of the alley, he stands silent, head tilted slightly, like when he hears the Jedi mention the Force.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispers. “Not allowed to interfere. Observation only. Always. You know, like my own Prime Directive. So my decision to rescue Davin is a personal, high-stakes ethical violation, just like Kirk, Picard, and Janeway do from time to time.”

I think to myself, How on earth is Luke going to rescue a missing kid?

He adjusts his cap. Something flickers behind his glasses. “He wasn’t taken. He fell.”

“Fell where?”

He taps his watch. “Between the seconds.”

He launches into another story. About Civarans. About time folds, reality warps, universes where oceans levitate and clocks bleed. I definitely hadn’t seen that movie.

“Davin laughs at my Star Wars jokes, and he likes my Ewok impression. That makes him family, like in Star Trek. I’m going to bring him back.”

I raise an eyebrow and ask him to consider the logical probability of such a claim.

He shrugs off my doubt. “There are moments when time forgets to catch you.”

Over the next two days, he sketches impossible maps, whistles at birds, and rigs a speaker to an umbrella he calls a “temporal stabilizer.” Barely sleeps.

He’s smart. But not the normal kind of smart. Speaks in bursts and circles like he’s buffering. Still trips on idioms; this morning, it was “spill the humans” instead of “spill the beans.” Gives Vulcan salutes, sometimes with the addition of “Yippee-ki-yay, civilian!”

On the third day, it rains.

Luke grins. “This is it,” he says. “Storms stretch the seams.”

He walks into the alley. Pushing the umbrella thing in a shopping cart we borrowed from the supermarket with full intention of returning.

I sit at the end of the alley, noticing his watch glowing brighter than usual as he walks forward.

The umbrella starts spinning counterclockwise. Faster and faster.

Then… he disappears… literally. No sound. No rain. No Luke. He told me to expect this, so I just hold on tight… and wait.

About five minutes later, he reappears, stumbling, soaked, and shaking.

Next to him, Davin. Barefoot.

He doesn’t say much. I think he’s in shock. He thanks Therrus, then runs. Home, I hope.

Therrus collapses beside me. Shivering. “I asked first, if he wanted to come back,” he pants. “He was scared. Thought he’d be lost forever. He was gone a long time.”

The flyers come down the next day. No one talks about what happened.

“Humans don’t want weird answers,” Therrus says. “They just want endings.”

I ask if he filed a report.

He taps his watch like it’s a moral compass. “I’m already in trouble.” He grins. “Might as well make it count. The order was clear. Do not engage. Observe only. But some things…” He trails off, then brightens again. “Anyway, yes, I’ve got to check in. It’s been too long. But first, I’m watching The Mandalorian. For research. Obviously.”

A day later, we return to the alley for Therrus to make sure the seam is sealed. He says subtle anomalous happenings might occur there for a couple of months, but no more temporal displacement.

My friend Therrus believes in fractures, and in what can be rescued from the space between seconds. I look at him in that alley. He smiles, bends down to my height, and slowly opens space between his middle finger and his index fingers.

I notice he has two indexes, despite the gloves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jane McCarthy recently wrapped five years as a co-founder of a deep-tech company, wrangling ideas, words, and the occasional engineer, in her role leading communications. Jane recently received a Silver Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Quarter Press, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Spillwords, The Underland Review, The Fairy Tale Magazine, Eye To The Telescope, Farmer-ish Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Havok.

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