Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications

past, when the surprise of a distant voice magically bound you to people.
    His mother answered.
    "Mom, it's Jimmy."
    "Let me get your father," she said, and her voice, though averted, became loud.
    "James!" she called. "It's your son!" Then, returning, "Are you still with that girl?"
    "Yeah."
    "That's that girl Rayna knew." Jimmy's cousin had hooked them up.
    "Bekka, yeah."
    "Everything still good?"
    "Yeah, yeah. Things are good. We're, uh, we're on a vacation together."
    "Mm," she said, and he knew what she thought of that, how it was too fast, but she wouldn't say a thing, just make sounds that told you she was processing the information, judging it, and if you knew her, you knew her judgment.
    He heard the rattle and hiss of his father picking up the other phone. "Hey hey!" his father called. "Jimmy!" It rendered Jimmy breathless.
    "Hey, Dad," he managed, at the moment not certain of himself but feeling loved and understood. "You and that girl—what's it, Bekka?—still together?"
    "Yeah, I—"
    "We covered that," said his mother. "They're on vacation together."
    "Oh, I see, I see. Where are you?"
    "Ahm." A fly climbed the spotty red curtain. "Between destinations," he said.
    "Why is there something instead of nothing?" He had asked this of Bekka on their first date, walking her home from an old-fashioned burger joint.
    She had laughed and said, "You sure move fast. We're already on theoretical physics?" then laughed again at his stammering reaction. "Okay," she said, putting her hand on his upper arm, thrilling him, "I'll tell you what we say we know," and the rest of the way back to the steps of her apartment, she had given him the rundown on the slight edge matter had over antimatter at the creation of the universe, on the latest thinking about the multiverse, on theories she called crazy and ones she said were credible but that still sounded crazy to him, till Jimmy summed it up for her.
    "So you don't know."
    "I don't care what they say," she said. "Some things can't be questioned. And other things we can't ask."
    The phone rang twice, and when she answered, he felt there was a world beyond the madness of this situation.
    "Baby," she said, "are you all right?"
    "I'm fine. I'm... I'm where I need to be. I wish I could tell you more, but I've got to keep this close for now."
    "You're not in trouble."
    "I am not in trouble," he said, tempted to follow up with, "but I'm headed for trou ble." He did say, "I promise to stay in touch. If that's what you want. This must feel like I've abandoned you."
    "You have important things to take care of, is that right?"
    "Yes. Yes, that's right."
    "Well," she said, "I know you are a good man."
    Across the miles, he felt her voice as a physical force that not only reached him, it altered him, making him the man she deserved.
    He had been wrong about the true nature of the self. After showering, he had peered again into the foggy mirror. His nose touched the glass. The man over there was motionless, but in the world at his back, violence and terror ground down ordinary people as if their lives had no purpose but to be pressed under history's terrible weight. Good people could not allow that. There at his back, past that shower wall, past the building, people acted to lift the heel of violence.
    You couldn't locate or understand the self by looking inward. You could only make sense of a self by observing its actions in the world. A good human was not a steady noun but a sequence of unexpected verbs. No matter if one sat in contemplation or acted for all the world to see: one became a full self by doing.
    Dressed, he sat in the single chair by the bed. An air conditioner labored at his back. He could not stop looking at the door, and after a while, he realized he was trying to see through it to what lay beyond.
    Something was coming. A man who intended to bring great harm had come to this city. Another man who intended to stop him—or at least stop his plans—was here as well. In a few