The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood Page A
Authors: Harriet Reuter Hapgood
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Jason agreeing to see meâit means Iâm going to get some answers. It means something. Doesnât it?
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Thursday 17 July
[Minus three hundred and nineteen]
Fick dich ins Knie, H. G. Wells!
It might be a sci-fi classic, but The Time Machine turns out to be all fi and no sciâsphinxes and troglodytes, rather than equations and mechanics. I throw the book on my bed and look up to the wall where Iâve scribbled my notes. My room is starting to take on a serial killerâs lair Wall Oâ Crazy appeal.
This is the first chance all evening Iâve had to be alone. Fingerband was in the kitchen, brainstorming âsomething majorâ for the summerâs-end shindig, while Papa flitted in and out. Newly minted groupies Sof and Meg tagged along, and when Thomas came back from his Book Barn shift, all three of them launched into a furious comic-book debate. (âGraphic novels,â Sof corrected me.) I lurked, cradling the warmth that Jason and I had a secret again.
Now itâs past midnight. Iâm hypothesizing, trying to narrow down what the wormholes have in common.
Meow . On my desk, Umlaut is hopping around atop the stack of diaries. I get up, grabbing themâkitten and allâand carry them back to the bed. As I move around the room, I notice the kitchen light through the garden, still on.
The diaries. Grey wrote about the day I first kissed Jason. There was DRUNK ON PEONIES , the same day we met at the beach. If I can find some of the other wormholes, I could plot the dates. Establish a pattern.
I let myself fall into the pages, ripping my heart wide open with how the world once was.
Umlaut paws at the duvet as I find the day at the Book Barn, how Grey wrote RESHELVING WITH CARO before scribbling it out and writing my name. In last yearâs diary, I find more of those asterisked *R s, confettied on the pages. There are no *R s in the earlier diaries, but I do find an entry about me and Thomas going on a school trip to the Science Museum, which ended in disgrace when he got trapped inside the space probe.
Seeing the words on the page reminds me that before we got in trouble, there was a projection of the galaxy on the ceiling. Lying on the floor, staring up, it was like â¦
Like being in the Milky Way.
Itâs not just one diary entry that corresponds to a vortex. All the wormholes are here.
Are the diaries whatâs causing everything? It canât be a coincidenceâeven if it doesnât explain the screenwipes, or the way the stars went out in the garden. This means I can only wormhole to days Grey wrote about. I donât have to revisit his funeral.
I donât have to see the day he died.
I grab the nearest textbook and flip through the index. Causality ⦠Einstein ⦠String theory ⦠Weltschmerzian Exception ⦠The words catch my eye, faintly familiar and already highlighted yellow. When I turn to the page, thereâs just a brief description:
The Weltschmerzian Exception manifests itself between two points, where the rules of spacetime no longer apply. As well as vortex violations, observers would witness stop-start effects, something like a âvisual rebootâ as they passed between different timelines. Based on theories of negative energy or dark matter and developed by Nobel-winning physicist
The next page is torn out, cutting off the entry.
The rules of spacetime no longer apply â¦
Vortex violationsâthat has to mean wormholes, which shouldnât be real. But Iâve witnessed them.
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v2.0. The world has âvisually rebootedâ twice now, both times when Thomas mentioned an email. An email I never received. What if thatâs because it doesnât exist in my reality? Thomas and I share a timeline in common except for this, so every time he mentions it, the world reboots? Is that even possible?
As I put the diaries back on my desk, I
Â
Thursday 17 July
[Minus three hundred and nineteen]
Fick dich ins Knie, H. G. Wells!
It might be a sci-fi classic, but The Time Machine turns out to be all fi and no sciâsphinxes and troglodytes, rather than equations and mechanics. I throw the book on my bed and look up to the wall where Iâve scribbled my notes. My room is starting to take on a serial killerâs lair Wall Oâ Crazy appeal.
This is the first chance all evening Iâve had to be alone. Fingerband was in the kitchen, brainstorming âsomething majorâ for the summerâs-end shindig, while Papa flitted in and out. Newly minted groupies Sof and Meg tagged along, and when Thomas came back from his Book Barn shift, all three of them launched into a furious comic-book debate. (âGraphic novels,â Sof corrected me.) I lurked, cradling the warmth that Jason and I had a secret again.
Now itâs past midnight. Iâm hypothesizing, trying to narrow down what the wormholes have in common.
Meow . On my desk, Umlaut is hopping around atop the stack of diaries. I get up, grabbing themâkitten and allâand carry them back to the bed. As I move around the room, I notice the kitchen light through the garden, still on.
The diaries. Grey wrote about the day I first kissed Jason. There was DRUNK ON PEONIES , the same day we met at the beach. If I can find some of the other wormholes, I could plot the dates. Establish a pattern.
I let myself fall into the pages, ripping my heart wide open with how the world once was.
Umlaut paws at the duvet as I find the day at the Book Barn, how Grey wrote RESHELVING WITH CARO before scribbling it out and writing my name. In last yearâs diary, I find more of those asterisked *R s, confettied on the pages. There are no *R s in the earlier diaries, but I do find an entry about me and Thomas going on a school trip to the Science Museum, which ended in disgrace when he got trapped inside the space probe.
Seeing the words on the page reminds me that before we got in trouble, there was a projection of the galaxy on the ceiling. Lying on the floor, staring up, it was like â¦
Like being in the Milky Way.
Itâs not just one diary entry that corresponds to a vortex. All the wormholes are here.
Are the diaries whatâs causing everything? It canât be a coincidenceâeven if it doesnât explain the screenwipes, or the way the stars went out in the garden. This means I can only wormhole to days Grey wrote about. I donât have to revisit his funeral.
I donât have to see the day he died.
I grab the nearest textbook and flip through the index. Causality ⦠Einstein ⦠String theory ⦠Weltschmerzian Exception ⦠The words catch my eye, faintly familiar and already highlighted yellow. When I turn to the page, thereâs just a brief description:
The Weltschmerzian Exception manifests itself between two points, where the rules of spacetime no longer apply. As well as vortex violations, observers would witness stop-start effects, something like a âvisual rebootâ as they passed between different timelines. Based on theories of negative energy or dark matter and developed by Nobel-winning physicist
The next page is torn out, cutting off the entry.
The rules of spacetime no longer apply â¦
Vortex violationsâthat has to mean wormholes, which shouldnât be real. But Iâve witnessed them.
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v2.0. The world has âvisually rebootedâ twice now, both times when Thomas mentioned an email. An email I never received. What if thatâs because it doesnât exist in my reality? Thomas and I share a timeline in common except for this, so every time he mentions it, the world reboots? Is that even possible?
As I put the diaries back on my desk, I
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