"Radio Nowhere" was a finalist for the 2010 Aurora Awards for best short story. This story first appeared in the anthology Campus Chillls, edited by Mark Leslie (aka Mark Lefebvre). The anthology was a joint effort by McMaster University, the University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, and my own alma mater, the University of Waterloo. The theme of the anthology was scary stories set on Canadian university campuses, but the anthology had a further twist. Three of the four university bookstores(UA, UW, McMaster) have an Espresso Book Machine, and the anthology was initially printed on the EBM's and available only in those bookstores. The antho had a great lineup of authors and stories, and I was thrilled to be included with this array of Canadian talent.

"Radio Nowhere" (as I continue my recent Springsteen title trend) is more weird than scary. It features UW's infamous steam tunnels, a duck, some strange radio, and large amounts of marijuana. Yeah, it's a love story. Kind of obvious, really. Enjoy!

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Radio Nowhere

© 2009 Douglas Smith

On the anniversary of the worst night of his life, Liam stood outside the darkened control room of the campus radio station. Over the speakers, the Tragically Hip’s “Boots and Hearts” was just winding down. Behind the glass in the studio, Ziggy’s small triangular face glowed like some night angel, lit from below by her laptop screen. She looked up, her eyes finding Liam’s in the darkness. Smiling, she wrinkled her nose at him. His own smile slid away, falling into the dark place inside him, the place that was always darker on this night.

Ziggy turned back to the mike as the song ended. “I’m closing with a request from an old friend, to an old friend. This one’s for Jackie, from Liam. A hurtin’ song, cuz he’s still hurtin’. Fifteen years ago tonight…” She looked at him through the glass.

Fifteen years. He closed his eyes. Fifteen years, and it still hurt this much.

“…but he still misses you, girl. I miss you. Hell, we all miss you. Too young, too young.” She shook her head. “This is Radio Waterloo, CKNW 100.3. Ziggy C, signing off. Back tomorrow night. Stay tuned for Dawg and his Midnight Mayhem show.”

Ziggy hit a button, and Springsteen’s “Downbound Train” wailed from the speakers. Pulling off her headphones, she ran her fingers through her short, black and green-dyed locks as she stood up. She shrugged on her worn, black leather UW jacket, wearing it as comfortably as she wore every year that had passed since the “1993” emblazoned on the jacket’s shoulder.

She stepped out of the studio and snaked an arm around Liam’s waist, pulling him into a hug. They stood there holding each other for a moment. Breaking it off, she slapped him on the bum and headed towards the door, squeezing past the crammed shelves of vinyl and CD’s. “Let us rock.”

He sighed, and forced a smile. “Let us roll.”

Outside the old warehouse that housed the station, Ziggy lit up a joint, took a deep toke, and then handed it to Liam. Looking up a crescent moon hanging above the broadcast tower in a star-specked, cloud-streaked October night sky, she let the toke out and nodded. “So you and your Beast haven’t blown the world up yet. Good to know.”

He smiled, despite it being the night that it was. The “Beast” was the particle accelerator buried deep below, ringing the campus underground. “If you’re going to believe urban legends, at least get them right. That’s the one at CERN. Ours is different.”

“Nanotech-morphed, which you can’t talk about, which is fine cuz I wouldn’t understand anyway. Not that it’ll make any difference if I understand when we all blow up.”

“Implosion, not explosion. We’re all supposed to get sucked into a black hole.” He took a toke, holding it in, waiting to feel the rush. Waiting to feel anything.

Ziggy shrugged, classic Ziggy, and took the joint from him. “Fuck, Lee, you’ve been fallin’ into one of those for fifteen years. Wouldn’t make any diff to you.”

They walked in silence, sharing the joint all the way down to Columbia. Tonight, the silence suited him fine. And silence with Ziggy was always comfortable. They turned west onto the Ring Road circling the center of the campus, what used to be almost the entire campus back when Jackie was…

Back when.

He remembered, trying not to.

The road bore south. They walked past Village One on their right, lying jumbled like a giant set of children’s blocks. Children’s blocks. Jackie had wanted to start a family…

They walked past the Village Green rolling dark and empty, its grass silvery in the moonlight. He’d made love to Jackie there, one hot August night…

They walked until they reached Sick Bay. A single Mallard duck paddled slowly across the small pond, trembling its brown surface. Overhanging the far side of the pond, white and boxy, sat Medical Services. Liam had carried Jackie there when she’d sprained her ankle coming down the steps of the Math building. That’s how he’d met her…

They stopped. They’d reached The Spot. The Spot, he thought, feeling the capitalization that he’d given it over the years.

Across the Ring Road lay the rambling one story red-brick of the Student Life Center, what had been the Campus Center back then, before a Tim Horton’s had been grafted onto it, and before the QNC--the huge Quantum-Nanotechnology Center--had risen to loom over it from the south, brightly lit in silver-blue-grey.

Jackie had been waiting in there, in the Campus Center, at the Bombshelter pub, that night. Waiting for him. He’d been late. She’d just left the pub, just started walking back to their home in the Tutor’s Houses past Village One. This is where she’d crossed the Ring Road.

Or started to cross.

Reaching into his denim jacket, he pulled out a single red rose. He kissed the still-closed bud, breathing in its thick sweetness, and then knelt to place the flower gently on the curb. Standing, he started to cry. He should’ve been there for her. She shouldn’t have died. They should still be together. Ziggy’s hand found his, and they stood in silence, until his sobs died away.

“Y’okay?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he lied, wiping his eyes.

“Me neither,” she said. Her arm circled his waist again. “Let’s go get drunk.”

They turned south, heading for the Grad Club, but had only taken a couple of steps when Ziggy stopped. “Hang on a sec.” Pulling out a little silver radio, she stuck one ear bud in her far ear, leaving the other bud dangling down her chest. She started thumbing the dial. “Dawg’s show. I like Dawg. He plays all the old shit.”

“Glad I have your attention,” he said, resenting the intrusion of the mundane into this night. Tonight was about Jackie, not some fucking radio show.

She shot him a look. “Don’t start, Lee. I’m here for you, boy. Been here every year.”

“Sorry.” But he didn’t feel sorry. No one understood, not even Ziggy. No one understood his pain, his guilt. Fifteen years.

“Always been here for you,” she muttered.

He sighed. Fighting with her wouldn’t help this night. “Look, I’m sorry…” Overhead, the streetlight flickered. He looked up. The streetlights all along the Ring Road flickered. He blinked. All the lights on campus were flickering. On. Off. On. Off.

“What the fuck?” Ziggy said.

“Oh. Right.” He checked his watch.

“What?”

“We’re running some tests of the accelerator tonight. That’s the first.”

“At night?”

“Power’s cheaper off peak. And the Beast draws a lot of power.”

“Oh, just fuckin’ A, Lee. So you’re not going to blow up the world, but I’ll have to reset all my clocks. Thanks a bunch.” She punched him in the arm, grinning.

He laughed, forgetting his anger with her. The lights kept flickering on and off, like a campus-wide stroboscope. When they reached the south end of Sick Bay, Ziggy stopped, looking over at the pond.

He followed her gaze, just as the lights flicked back on and stayed on. On the pond, the same Mallard was still paddling lazily back and forth. “What?”

She kept staring at the duck. “Could’ve sworn…” She shook her head. “That must’ve been good shit. Could’ve sworn that duck was walkin’ on the water.”

He shook his head. “A Mallard with a Jesus complex. God won’t like that.”

She laughed and pulled out another joint. “So I’m either very stoned or not stoned enough. Either way, this will help.” She started to light up, and then stopped, putting her hand up to the radio ear bud.

“What?”

She handed him the other bud, and he leaned in close to her to fit it into his ear. She smelled of soap, warm skin, and marijuana. “Recognize that?” she asked.

It did sound familiar. After a few seconds, it came to him. “Shit, that’s from ‘Moon over Morocco.’ That old radio serial.”

She nodded, still looking puzzled. “Not like Dawg to play something like that. And it cut from Jefferson Airplane to this, mid-Gracie Slick.”

“You change the station by mistake?”

She checked the dial. “Nope. Weird.” She grinned. “Man, ‘Moon Over Morocco.’ That takes me back. Remember when we first heard it? It was on Radio Waterloo then, too. Start of the term, us all sittin’ around your apartment, totally stoned.”

He nodded, remembering. Then he swallowed, remembering more. He pulled the bud from his ear. “That was just before Jackie died.”

Her grin ran away. “Oh. Shit. Yeah, it was.” She stared at the radio in her palm, as if it was going to bite her. “Weird. Sorry.”

He tried to close the memories out, but they’d already pushed through the door. Fifteen years ago, in the tiny apartment he and Jackie had in the Tutor’s Houses. With Ziggy and X-Ray, her drummer boyfriend of the time. Screech, Liam’s best bud back then, and that blonde he’d been going with. What was her name? Passing the hookah around, laughing. Jackie cuddling warm and soft next to him. And listening to a crazy radio serial that now suddenly decided to replay on this night of all nights. And replay these memories with it. Jackie. Oh, god, when would the pain stop? He started walking.

“Lee.”

He turned. Ziggy still stood there, listening to the radio. Behind her, the streetlights rising along the curve of the Ring Road were flickering once more. Off. On. Off. On. “Shit. This is even weirder.” She walked up to him, her face pale. She handed him the other ear bud again.

Static. Buzzing. Then a voice. Male. The static hid what he was saying at first. Then the words became clear, and along with them, the sense of desperation.

“Can anybody hear me?” cried the voice. “…[static]… anybody out there? Oh, god, is there …[static]… left alive?”

“Jeezus,” Ziggy whispered, as the street lights flicked off and stayed off. “That’s not ‘Moon Over Morocco’.”

“Anybody? Anyone at all? If you’re alive…[static]…can hear me, then…[static]”

The streetlights flicked back on, staying on. The voice disappeared, and Liam flinched as the ending crescendo of the Stone’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” exploded into his ear. He yanked the bud out.

“Sorry,” Ziggy said, wincing herself. “Cranked the volume, trying to hear what that guy was saying. That was freaky. He sounded, y’know, serious. Like it was real.” She looked up at him, biting her lip.

“You change stations?” he asked, trying to forget the emptiness in the voice.

She checked the dial. “Nope.”

“Maybe they switched to another radio play.”

She tilted her head, listening. “It’s Dawg again. No mention of ‘Moon,’ nothing about that guy. And that ‘Moon’ ep had just started. Why would he only play a few minutes of it? Then switch to something else, then back to music?”

The loneliness in the man’s words came back to him, and he shivered, but covered it with a shrug. He really didn’t give a shit, especially tonight. He had his own loneliness to worry about.

She looked at him, shrugged back. Pulling out the ear bud, she wrapped the headphones around the radio and shoved it in her pocket. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s go get drunk. Large quantities of alcohol will make all of this so much clearer.” She lit the joint she’d been holding and handed it to him.

~~~

Three hours later, they sat slumped against the wall of South Campus Hall, after exiting the Grad Club at the suggestion of the bartender. Liam leaned his head back, letting the cold of the brick soothe his pounding head. “It didn’t, you know,” he mumbled. “The alcohol…”

“What?”

“Didn’t make it clearer. Nothing’s clear to me.”

“I was being sarcastic…”

“Nothing’s been clear to me since that night. Except my work.”

Ziggy sighed. “So you bury yourself down there. You and your Big Giant Ring.” She laughed. “Liam and his little particles--all of you goin’ round in a circle, getting nowhere.”

“Fuck off.” He didn’t need one of her moods.

“Just saying, Lee.” She chuckled. “At least your particles get to bump into each other.”

“Fuck off, Zig.”

“You need to bump into something.” She elbowed him. “Or somebody. When was the last time you did any bumping with anybody?”

He did the math. “Two weeks ago.” Bumping. That’s all it had been. No real contact.

She snorted. “Yeah, right. With who?”

“Whom.”

“Fuck off.”

“Ginny.”

Something flickered across her face. “That skinny little tech? The mousey blonde?”

“Yeah. So there. Take that,” he said, happy to make her grin disappear.

She looked away and didn’t say anything for a while. “Is it serious?”

He laughed. Serious. He’d felt nothing. All it had done was make him miss Jackie even more. It always did, no matter who it was. “No. Just sex. Just that once, too.”

“Good,” she muttered.

“What?”

Pause. “Good you’re gettin’ some.”

“Didn’t know you were worried about my love life.”

That flicker ran over her face again. “Always worried about you.” She turned away. “That’s what friends are for,” she added quietly. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder and reaching out to touch the wedding ring that he still wore, her hand warm on his. “My Liam and his rings. His big one that will end the world, and this little one that was his world, his world that really did end. Liam caught in the middle of his rings, going round and round, getting nowhere.”

He closed his eyes against his tears. “You gonna ask when I’m going to stop wearing it?”

Ziggy shook her head, rocking it on his shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek. “Nope. Not tonight.”

“I will, you know,” he said, trying to sound convincing. “When I meet the right girl.”

She pulled her hand suddenly from his, and pushed herself up, her face unreadable. “Great. Hopefully, I’ll be the first to know. Just so long as it’s not that skinny little shit Ginny.” She held up a hand, a key dangling from her fingertips. “Up and at 'em, dude. Next phase of tonight’s festivities.”

He considered the key through his alcohol and marijuana haze. “The Tunnels?”

She grinned. “The Tunnels.”

~~~

The Tunnels. Legendary underground labyrinth running under the centre of campus linking all the buildings inside the Ring Road. Not the public tunnels accessible to anyone, like those between the Arts buildings, or Math & Computer and Chem II.

The Tunnels. Capital T. The ones used by plant operations personnel, but not open to the public.

Well, not officially open.

Unless you knew where the entrances were.

And had a key.

In a stairwell in the basement of Chem II, Ziggy swore as she wiggled the key in the lock of an unmarked, pale green, metal door. “This night’d be a fuck of a lot easier if they’d stop changin’ the locks,” she muttered.

“Uh, maybe that’s why you can’t get it open?”

Something clicked, and she yanked the door open with a grin. “Nah, just a new key. They change the locks, but never their locksmith, who likes my product. Speaking of product…” She lit another joint and handed it to him. “After the Minotaur, dude.” She slipped inside.

Liam sighed. The dope and the booze hadn’t dulled the pain of this night. It never really did. He hesitated, seriously considering calling her back, calling it a night. But the pain would still be there when he returned alone to his empty apartment, and he wasn’t ready to be alone yet. Not tonight. “Fuck it.” Taking a toke, he followed her inside. The door closed behind them.

He spent the next hour wandering the tunnels behind Ziggy, gradually growing less drunk but more stoned. He found he was okay, Jackie-wise, as long as he kept moving, kept walking, concentrating on the twists and turns of the tunnels, and not on Jackie.

Most of the tunnels were about eight feet high and across, with grey concrete block walls. They ran at right-angles and were often connected by sets of metal stairs, since the campus sloped down from north to south. Large pipes of various sizes and colors ran along one wall, with tubing carrying electrical and communication cables covering most of the opposite wall and ceiling. This left only about three feet of clear space, forcing single-file walking most of the time. Every twenty-five feet, a single overhead fluorescent bulb, often partially blocked by adjacent tubing, provided the only illumination, turning the tunnels into rivers of dimness connecting islands of light.

“I remember the first time I brought Jackie down here,” Liam said, swallowing down a memory. “This is the first place I ever kissed her. She said--”

“She said ‘Let’s play a game,’” Ziggy interrupted. “She’d go hide, and if you found her, she’d give you a kiss. You tell me every fuckin’ year.” She looked around the dark, dreary tunnel. “Such a romantic spot, too. X-Ray brought me down here once. Asshole wanted more than a kiss.”

“She let me catch her,” he whispered, remembering that first kiss, how Jackie’s lips had felt, tasted. How she’d smelled, how she’d felt in his arms, her body pressed warm against his. He remembered what she wore that night, too. Yellow sweater. Black jeans.

Yellow sweater. Black jeans. He slumped against a wall. Fuck. When would it end?

“Y’okay?” Ziggy asked.

“Memories…”

“Are overrated.” She handed him a lit joint.

“Jeezus, another?”

Shrug. “Whatever gets you through the night, my BFF. Whatever gets you through this night. This is my mission. And fool that I am, I decided to accept it. Again.”

They turned a corner and stopped. Ahead, this tunnel ended five paces away in a bricked-up wall. “Shit,” he said. “Wrong turn.”

“Must be under Engineering II,” Ziggy said, squinting at the wall. “That old stretch they closed in ’98 after that dumb-ass kid died.” She turned around. “Time to rewind.”

Liam stared at the bricked up wall, thinking of the dead kid, thinking of dead Jackie, staring, thinking, staring…

Until the lights--all the lights, not just the one in this shortened tunnel--suddenly died, plunging them into complete darkness.

“Fuck,” Ziggy said from somewhere behind him.

He pressed the light button on his watch and checked the time. “Shit. It’s the Beast again. We’re running the second test.”

“Oh, great, Lee. These tunnels are tough enough when we can see.” She sounded a little scared.

The lights came back on for an eye blink, then flicked off again. In that quantum of visibility, it seemed to Liam that the bricked-up wall in front of him had disappeared, that he was looking down the old tunnel, the way it had been when he’d first explored down here. The way it had been when he’d brought Jackie down here that first time. That first kiss. Jackie…

He jumped as Ziggy grabbed his arm in the dark. “Liam, I’m starting to freak,” she said. “I’m too stoned for this shit.”

The lights flicked back on. Then off. On. Off. On. Off. The lights kept flickering, and with them, the tunnel ahead flashed in and out of light. And with each flash, the scene before him strobed between showing him the bricked-up wall and then, on the next flicker, showing instead the full length of the tunnel as it once was.

The lights flickered. On. Off. On. Off.

The scene flickered. Wall. Tunnel. Wall. Tunnel.

Ziggy’s grip on his arm tightened. “What the fuck?”

“You see it, too?”

And then, in one heartbeat long pulse of dim fluorescent luminescence, the wall disappeared again. Time slowed, and Liam caught a flash of someone moving past the now unblocked end of the tunnel. The image burned into his eyes and his brain. And his heart.

Her face. Her hair. Yellow sweater. Black jeans.

“No,” he whispered, falling to his knees. Behind him, Ziggy gave a little cry. The lights flicked off again, only to return a second later, staying on this time. Ahead of him, the bricked-up wall loomed, the tunnel gone once more.

He stared at the wall, not believing but knowing what he’d seen.

“Jackie…” he whispered.

~~~

The next night, Liam was waiting again outside the darkened control room of Radio Waterloo as Ziggy signed off. She stepped out of the studio and saw him standing there. She stared at him for a breath, then shrugged. “Come to walk me home? That’s sweet, Lee.” Shrugging on her leather jacket, she threw a “g’night” to Dawg as she passed him in the hall, and then walked out the front door. Liam followed her.

“Can we talk?” he asked as he caught up to her on the road.

“Long as it’s talk and walk. Gotta get home. Papers to grade.”

“Yeah, sure.” But he fell silent, unsure of how to start, and aware that Ziggy was in one of her moods, the kind that he’d never figured out.

They’d reached the Ring Road before Ziggy herself finally broke the silence. “Freaky night last night, eh? Gonna lay off the dope for a while.”

“It was her, Zig.”

“Ah, fuck,” she snapped, smashing her fists into the sides of her thighs. “Don’t start again.” She quickened her pace, pulling ahead.

“It was her,” he called to her back. “I saw her. She was right in front of my eyes.”

“You can’t see shit, Lee!” she flung over her shoulder. “That’s your problem. You can’t see what’s right in front of your own eyes.”

What was she talking about? “You saw her, too. I know you did.”

She spun around. “I didn’t see shit, Liam!” she screamed at him. A couple of first years turned to stare, then quickly looked away when she glared at them. She stalked back to him. “I told you last night. I didn’t see shit. You didn’t see shit,” she said, poking him in the chest. “That was the grass. The brew. Fuck, we were stoned out of our skulls.”

“No. That was her! Back when I first took her down there. We were there, Zig. For that moment, we were back there.” He was shouting himself now, trying to make her believe. Trying to make himself believe.

She looked up at him. Suddenly, the anger drained from her face, and he thought she was going to cry. Shaking her head, she turned away again. “You are un-fucking-believable.”

He caught up to her. She kept walking, eyes straight ahead. “There’s more,” he said. “The lights flickering matched against both tests of the Beast last night--the first time when we heard ‘Moon over Morocco’, and the second time when that wall disappeared, when we saw the old tunnel.” He hesitated. “When we saw Jackie.”

“I didn’t see her, Lee,” she repeated, her voice rising. They walked in silence down to the Village Green. Finally, she spoke again. “So? So the Beast was running. So what?”

“So the Beast creates temporary black holes,” he answered, trying to control his excitement. “Black holes affect time. I think the accelerator somehow created a time distortion. A window into the past. The tunnels are underground, even closer to the accelerator. Any effect would be greater there.”

“Again, so?”

They reached Sick Bay, where the same Mallard duck paddled lazily. A few more steps brought them to the Spot. He stopped, imagining Jackie crossing that road right there that night as he had a million times before. He checked his watch. Almost time. He turned back to Ziggy. “Look, please just humor me.”

She folded her arms, staring at him, her jaw working, face unreadable. Something softened in her expression. She sighed and threw her arms up in mock exasperation. “Fine. Fuck it. What?”

“Got your little radio?”

“Yeah?”

“Tune it to Radio Waterloo. And give me a bud.”

She fished the radio from her pocket, and handed him an ear bud. She stepped closer so he could put it in, squeezing his arm. “Oh, Lee, Lee, Lee,” she whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”

He ignored her. Dawg was talking, introducing the next song. The Doors’ “Break on Through to the Other Side” began.

Ziggy shrugged. “And I repeat--so? That’s Dawg.”

“Wait.” He checked his watch again. “Now.” The streetlights on the Ring Road and in the campus buildings began flickering again. Off. On. Off. On.

“Oh, great,” she said. “I just reset my clocks, asshole.”

On the radio, Dawg faded, replaced by static at first, then gradually, another “Moon over Morocco” episode rose from the hissing into crystal clarity.

Ziggy’s eyes widened into something that might have been surprise, might have been fear. “Shit,” she whispered.

“That episode--is it earlier or later than the one we heard last night?”

She bit her lip, listening. “Later.”

That’s what he’d thought, too. “How much?”

“Hafta check, but I’d say about ten, fifteen eps.”

“‘Moon’ played every night when they ran it that year, right?”

She nodded.

He pulled out the ear bud, thinking. It had moved later, by ten to fifteen days. Right direction , but not enough. “Okay,” he muttered. “I can fix that.”

“Wanna tell me what this is about?”

He looked at her, not sure if he should tell her. “The first test of the Beast last night produced a radio broadcast from two months before Jackie died. The second test gave us a scene from about a year earlier, when Jackie and I’d just met. Two tests, two points in time. I used the settings from those two tests to extrapolate for the test they just ran now.”

She stared at him, and that thing peeked from her eyes again. This time, he could tell. It was fear. “Extrapolate…” She swallowed. “You’re trying to move the time window.”

He nodded.

She stepped back from him. “Trying to move it later…” To his amazement, tears formed in her eyes. “To when, Lee?” she said, wiping the tears away. “Wait, don’t tell me. Late October that year, right? Last night to be precise. Fifteen years ago, last night.” She stared at him, the tears returning. “You stupid fuck.”

“I can change it, Zig.”

“You dumb, stupid fuck,” she said, shaking her head.

“I can save her. I can find that night. If I run the Beast longer, the window should last longer. I can be here. Here, when she’s going to cross the road. I can save her. Don’t you understand?”

“I do understand!” she cried. “I understand fucking perfectly! You don’t understand.”

He swallowed. “I don’t understand you, that’s for sure. Why are you acting like this?”

She laughed, a bitter sound. “First smart thing you’ve said. No, you don’t understand me.” She looked away, wiping her face. “Never have,” she whispered.

He swallowed, lost for a response, finally settling on the only one he knew. “But I love her, Zig.”

She spun to face him again, her body rigid, her hands clenched into fists at her side. She screamed her next words. “SHE’S…FUCKING…DEAD!” She stepped back, hugging herself, sobbing. “Fifteen years. Dead for fifteen fucking years. Fifteen years you’ve wasted, Lee. Fifteen years in your life. Going around in your fucking circles. Ring around the rosey. Going nowhere.”

They stood there, facing each other, but suddenly more distant than the few steps between them. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He shook his head. “I…I still love her.”

She wiped her eyes with a fist, shaking her head, her face unreadable again. “That ain’t love, Lee. That’s obsession.”

The lights on campus flickered again. On. Off. On. Off. Ziggy put a hand up to the single ear bud she still had in. She looked at him, her jaw working, then shoved the other ear bud at him. He put it in.

“This is Radio [static]…Can anybody hear me? Is there anybody out there? Anybody? Is anybody alive? Oh god, if you can hear me [static]…”

Ziggy stood there, staring a mute accusation at him, her back to Sick Bay. He looked past her. The duck…

Following his stare, she turned to see what he saw, what he saw but didn’t believe.

The duck was walking across the water. Not swimming, not wading, but walking, its orange feet brilliant and visible above the pond’s black surface in the lights from Med Services. The night sky above was suddenly dark, starless, moonless.

The static from the radio ear bud faded again, and from it rose that lost, lonely voice. “[static]nowhere, nothing. Please, is there anybody out there? Isn’t there anyone left alive? I’m still here at [static]…” The voice died into noise again.

The campus lights kept flickering.

Off. On. The duck was walking. The stars were gone.

Off. On. The duck was swimming. The stars shone bright.

Off. On. Off. On.

Walk. Swim. Walk. Swim.

No stars. Stars. No stars. Stars.

The flickering finally stopped. The lights returned. The duck was swimming. Stars shone again in the cold night sky.

Ziggy shot another look at the duck, then turned to him. “That duck’s not the only one with a Jesus complex, Lee. Go ahead. Resurrect your Jackie. Raise her from the dead. Just keep me out of it.”

She shoved the little radio into his hand, then stalked across the Ring Road. On the other side, she turned back, her hands jammed into the pockets of her leather jacket. “What if your precious Beast opens other windows?” she called. “That guy we’re hearing on the radio? What if that’s the future? The future you’re making for us while you’re trying to play God?”

He watched her walk away, disappearing behind the QNC. He looked back to the now-swimming duck, then down at the little radio lying like a cold dead thing in his palm. Turning his back on Sick Bay and the duck, he jammed the radio into his pocket, and stared instead at The Spot. He shook his head. Only one thing mattered.

“Jackie,” he whispered.

He walked back to his apartment, working the calculations in his head.

~~~

The next week was even lonelier for him than usual. He’d never realized what a huge part of his life Ziggy had become. For fifteen years, she’d just always been there when he needed her. Part of his day. Part of his world.

Suddenly, she ‘d disappeared from that world, as if he’d lost her like he’d lost Jackie. She wouldn’t answer her phone, wouldn’t come to the door, didn’t return messages. He finally gave up, not in trying to contact her, but in expecting any response. Ziggy was Ziggy. She’d talk to him again only when she was ready to. That much about her he understood.

So he resigned himself to carrying on a one-sided conversation via phone and text and email messages, hoping that she’d at least listen to or read them even if she didn’t respond. Every day, message by message, he explained how his tests were proceeding, his successes, his failures. And with every message, he waited for her to pick up the phone, to see a reply in his inbox, a “message waiting” flashing on his phone.

But no reply came. His loneliness grew, but instead of making him want to give up his quest and to reconcile with his friend, the loss of Ziggy from his life only made him yearn for Jackie even more.

Finally, he was ready, every calculation checked and rechecked, every test confirming expectations. That night, sitting in his small, cramped apartment, he dialed Ziggy one more time. Three rings and it bounced to voice mail.

“This is Ziggy. I’m not here. In apology, I give you this beep.” Beep.

“Ziggy, pick up.” He waited. Silence. “C’mon Zig.” Ziggy’s little silver radio, ear buds wrapped around it, lay beside his phone. Is anybody out there? Can anybody hear me? “Okay, well, anyway, I’m ready. To try it. Tomorrow. Midnight. At the Spot. I hope…” He hoped--what? Fuck it. “Hope you’ll be there.” He hung up.

He stared at the radio. Is anybody out there? Yeah, he thought. My Jackie.

Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, his life would change. Tomorrow night, he’d have Jackie back. Yet somehow, without Ziggy, it just didn’t feel right.

~~~

The next night. On the Day. At the Spot. Just before midnight.

The night air was cold, the dark sky cloudless and star-spotted. No cars travelled the Ring Road, and the few students who drifted by ignored Liam where he sat on the grass. Down the slope behind him, what he assumed was the same duck slept with its head tucked under one wing, floating lazily on the muddy water in Sick Bay.

For one last time, he looked up the road in the direction of the radio station. He sighed. No point in waiting for her any longer. He stood up.

He turned on Ziggy’s little silver radio. Dawg was introducing R.E.M.’s “The End of the World as We Know It.” Pulling out his Blackberry, he established a secure VPN connection into the QNC network and the computer controlling the Beast. Opening his test program, he typed “Run / Scenario = Jackie7.3” into the device. His thumb hovered above the Send key. He looked up at the Spot. And stopped.

A familiar small figure, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her worn leather UW jacket, was walking towards him from the SLC. She crossed the road at the Spot, and he felt his guts clench as the memory of Jackie being struck down here melted into a sudden unbidden image of Ziggy dying in this same place. Shivering, he pushed the thought away.

Stopping in front of him, she looked up at him, her jaw working. Then she kicked him lightly on the leg. “Asshole.”

He smiled. “Bitch.” He swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. Ziggy was here. Everything seemed right again. This was going to work.

She looked away, then back again. “Still gonna do this thing?”

He hesitated. Right, the test. How could he have forgotten? He nodded. She nodded back, then shook her head. “So what’s the plan?”

He waved his Blackberry. “I start the Beast running, with my tested settings.”

Another headshake. “And shit gets weird here. How do you know you’ll hit The Night?”

He tapped the ear bud. “These settings brought in the same episode of ‘Moon over Morocco’ that was playing when…” He looked down. “…that was playing that night. I checked the station’s broadcast records.”

“You mean you’ve already gone back to that night?”

“Just low energy tests, enough to affect radio signals. But tonight I’ll crank up the volume. Higher energy. Try to recreate what happened in the tunnels, only hold the window open longer.”

She looked at the ear bud. “Hear anything else in your tests?”

He hesitated, remembering. Is there anybody out there? He shook his head.

She snorted. “Liar.” She sighed. “So do the deed.” She nodded at the duck. “Me? I’m going to wait with my new buddy.”

He swallowed. “Aren’t you, you know, going to be here with me?”

She smiled up at him, as tender a look as he’d ever seen on her face. “Been here with you for fifteen years. Now…” She glanced across the road to The Spot. “Now, you’re hitting RESET. You’re getting your Jackie back. You don’t need me anymore.” She looked at him. “Do you, Lee?” When he didn’t answer, she nodded. “Yeah. Thought so.” She walked down the slope to the edge of Sick Bay. Sitting down on the grass, her back to him, she lit up a joint and stared at the duck.

Angry, he started to call to her, then stopped. What did it matter if Ziggy was in one of her moods? Turning away from her, he faced the Spot. His thumb hovered again above the Send key.

You’re hitting RESET.

Reset? He swallowed, understanding. If this worked, Jackie would be alive, but these past fifteen years would never have happened.

Been here fifteen years for you…

So? He'd dreamed of this moment, right? To finally end the ache that had lived in his heart since Jackie’s death. His Jackie. His life. But another ache was growing inside him, one that he couldn’t name.

Reset. Start over. Rewind fifteen years. Fifteen years of memories…

You don’t need me anymore. Do you?

He looked at the Spot. Fifteen years. Reset. Jackie…

That ain’t love, Lee. That’s obsession.

With a sob, no longer knowing why he was doing it, more because he didn’t know what else to do, he pressed the key.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then everything went black, as if he’d just flipped the light switch for the universe. The lights along the Ring Road disappeared. The lights in the Student Life Centre, the QNC, every light on campus disappeared. Above, the stars in the cold night sky disappeared. Complete darkness fell, a darkness that seemed less a loss of light, and more a palpable presence of something else, something that had never known light. Behind him, he heard Ziggy cry out in fear.

On the little radio, R.E.M. faded. A chill ran up his spine, knowing what he’d hear next.

“…body alive out there? [static] …hear me? Anybody? If you can [static]…”

What if that’s the future? The future you’re making…

The radio cut out. The stars, the lights, the world returned. Or rather, a world returned.

A different world.

Reset.

He gasped. The huge QNC had vanished, replaced by an expanse of grass and criss-crossing walkways between Chem II on the south and Math and the SLC on the north. The Tim Horton’s was gone, and the SLC was once again the old Campus Centre as it had been back then, back when...

Reset.

Back when Jackie had died.

The static faded from the radio, and “Moon over Morocco” flared to clarity, the same episode that had been on that night. He’d hit the date! He checked his watch. 12:04am.

There’d been witnesses, people who’d known the time when she’d been hit--12:07am.

Three minutes. Could the Beast hold the window open that long? Could the Universe grant him that much?

As if to mock him, the lights began to flicker. The lights strobed off and on, and with them, the scene before him. Off. On. The Tim Horton’s and the QNC returned. Off. On. They vanished again, and the old Campus Centre lay before him.

Off. On. The world where Jackie still lived disappeared.

Off. On. That world returned, and with it, his dream of fifteen years.

He checked his watch. Two minutes. Still wanting Ziggy beside him, he turned to where she sat beside Sick Bay. Except that Ziggy was no longer sitting beside the pond.

She was walking across it. Walking calmly towards where the duck still slept with its head under a wing, only now it stood on one brilliant orange foot on the surface of the water.

Ziggy sat down beside the duck. She was crying, tears glistening her cheeks, her pale face shining like the impossible surface of the pond on which she now sat.

Reset. Fifteen years of memories.

Without thinking, he started down the slope towards her before he remembered. He stopped, looking at his watch. 12:06am. Across the Ring Road, a group of students poured out of the Campus Centre. A familiar slim figure detached itself from the group, hurrying ahead, hurrying home. Hurrying to her death. He gasped, and he had to force his next breath in.

“Jackie,” he whispered, unable to believe that it was her. He looked down the road. The blue Toyota that would strike her down had just appeared around the corner of the Psych building. Ahead of him, head down, Jackie rushed towards the road.

The lights on campus flickered. His heart skipped. Was he going to lose his chance to save her? “Moon over Morocco” faded from the radio, replaced again by that desperate lonely voice. “Can’t anybody hear me out there? Isn’t there anyone left alive [static]…”

He stepped onto the road, and as he did so, other noises rose, but not through the ear bud of the little radio.

A splash. A duck squawking. A scream.

Ziggy’s scream.

He spun around. Below him, the duck was no longer standing on the water. It was swimming rapidly away from where Ziggy flailed in the murky brown water of the pond. She opened her mouth but her words died in a gurgling sound as she slipped beneath the surface. Ziggy couldn’t swim.

Dropping the radio, he leapt down the slope. He was halfway down before he realized what he was doing, what he’d just left behind.

Jackie…

But then Ziggy disappeared under the water again, and he forgot everything else. He dove into the pond, the cold hitting him like an electric shock. Three strokes brought him to where she’d gone under. He dove, kicking, pulling himself deeper. His hand brushed against something. He grabbed, his fingers closing around the leather of her jacket. Gripping tight, he pulled her to him and kicked for the surface. In the air once more, he stroked for the shore, cradling her in one arm. She wasn’t breathing. Oh, god, she wasn’t breathing.

The pond bottom at the edge was like quicksand, and he seemed to sink deeper with each step, Ziggy hanging like a dead weight in his arms. Finally reaching the grassy bank, he laid her down. She wasn’t breathing. She really wasn’t breathing. Oh god. He started mouth-to-mouth. Once. Twice. Oh god, please. Three times.

Suddenly, she coughed, spewing dirty pond water into his face. She rolled onto her hands and knees, retching and coughing. She kept coughing until she finally fell back down onto the grass. He lay beside her, cradling her to him, not wanting to let go of her, not then, not ever.

She opened her eyes and stared at him for several seconds without speaking, as if she was trying to remember who he was. Then she grinned. “I walked on water.”

“You dumb ass,” he said, as relief washed over him. “You almost drowned.”

“Oh,” she said, then her eyes widened. “Oh, shit! Jackie! Did it work? Did you save her?”

He shook his head. “Saved you instead.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She frowned. “So go get her now.”

He looked back to where the QNC once more rose into the sky. He shook his head again. “The window’s gone.”

She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh god, Lee. I’m sorry.” She started to cry.

“It’s okay.” He thought about it. Reset. Fifteen years of memories. He nodded, as much to himself as to her. “Really.”

She looked at him, sniffling. “Really?”

He shrugged. “You were drowning.”

She considered that. “So…possibly destroying the world didn’t stop you, but having to save me did.” She grinned. “Cool.” Suddenly, she grabbed his hand. “Shit, you’ve lost your wedding ring.”

He stared at his empty ring finger. “Must’ve come off in the pond.”

“Want to try to find it?” she asked, not meeting his eyes.

He thought about that, then slowly shook his head. “No.” He swallowed, looking at her. “I think I, like, you know…love you.”

She stared at him. Then she started to laugh.

“Not quite the reaction I expected.”

“Oh, Lee. You dumb fuck. Fifteen years.” She kept laughing. “God, you’re slow.”

He laughed with her, and then pulled her to him into a deep, long kiss. Is there anybody out there? Yeah, he thought, I am. Finally.

Somewhere nearby, he could hear a duck quacking.

The End

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