As Nev’s Tesseract EZ5 backed itself into a parking space at the Park Chalet, a tangerine orange 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS electrofit pulled in alongside, its glossy paint job refracting the rays of the bright morning sun to blinding effect. Nev had to squint to see the figure emerging from the car. She expected some fat cat brogrammer wearing steroidal kicks and smart shades to tumble from the driver’s-side door, but instead, a pair of long, shapely, black-clad legs slid out, followed by a lean and muscular torso, topped with radiant purple hair, waving in the ocean breeze.
Nev jumped out of her seat, slamming the EZ5’s car door as she stalked over to the hacker, who stood beaming next to the gleaming orange carapace, like a sci-fi hero gloating over a vanquished space bug.
“9:33:23” Airin said, catching Nev off guard.
“What?”
“Tomorrow night you’re going to ask me what time we meet this morning. That’s the answer. 9:33:23.”
“What the fuck, Airin? Were you following me?”
Airin turned around and stared pointedly at the tangerine Porsche.
“Did you see me following you?”
“No…”
“Don’t you think you would have noticed?”
Airin had a point. There was no way Nev could have overlooked this beast in her rearview mirror. For one thing, the ’73 Porsche 911 was one of Nev’s top five favorite cars of all time. Her dad had kept a stack of old Porsche calendars in the trailer he used for his office at the junkyard, and Nev had spent many happy hours memorizing their contents when she was little. For another thing, it was bright fucking orange.
“What then? Are you geotracking my phone?”
“No, Nev. I’m not tracking you. You told me what time to get here.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Airin looked at Nev expectantly, waiting a beat for the logic to set in.
“From your perspective it hasn’t happened yet,” they said finally.
Nev knit her eyebrows together. “So you say, but why should I believe you?”
Airin gestured at the car again.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that I pulled in here driving one of your childhood dream cars? How many of these do you think are out there? You’re the one who bought it for me.”
“I did what?”
Nev’s knees went wobbly, and for a second she thought she might collapse, but then Airin was by her side, their left hand supporting Nev’s elbow, grip surprisingly strong.
“Come on, let’s go inside. I’ll buy you a hot chocolate and I can explain.”
Ten minutes later, Nev was seated across from Airin at a corner table against the window, shivering a bit despite the warm sun and the aromatic steam curling up from her mug. Airin, who hadn’t touched the blondie on their plate or taken a sip of their gen mai cha, was watching her silently, eyebrows slightly raised, like two inverted breves over their deep brown, almost black eyes.
“Okay,” Nev said, after a deep, shaky breath. “First things first: we haven’t spoken since Stanford. Frankly, I’m shocked you even remember me. But here you are,” she gestured abstractly, “buying me hot chocolate, driving my favorite car, acting like… like… we’re friends or something. Like you know me. So, you know, pardon me if I find this all a little hard to swallow.”
Airin laughed to themself, purple bouffant bobbing as they shook their head, giving Nev a glimpse of dark roots beneath.
“I get it, Nev. Believe me, I understand. But you know how this works. Your past is my future. And your future, well, I’ve been a part of it. For a while. I do know you. We are friends. At least, we were. We will be.”
A plume of suspicion erupted in Nev’s chest, spreading its acid warmth through her limbs. The first thing Qbito taught its engineers in its obligatory tactical cybersec workshop was that the human heart is the weakest link in any sociotechnical system. Trust needs to be earned. Verified. More precisely, if a notorious hacker suddenly appears in your life, acting like an old buddy, assume the worst until they’ve proven themselves.
“How do I know this isn’t social engineering? How do I know that you’re not the one who… who got me into this mess to begin with?” Best not to tip her hand too far; who knew what Airin did and didn’t know about the Glitch.
“You’re right.” Airin put their hands on the table, long fingers splayed. “You don’t know me from Adam… any more. I know I’ve got to earn your trust. Well, for starters, you once told me that nothing matters to you more than Faith.”
Nev could hear the capital F in Airin’s voice. If the hacker was engaged in some kind of long con, invoking her dead sister was a pretty low blow. Then again, it did sound like the kind of thing Nev would tell a close friend who would need a shortcut through her defenses. She took a sip of hot chocolate, just to hide her face until she could compose herself. Then she put the mug back down on the table between them, like a chess piece.
“Sorry, not good enough. If you really know me, you know what I’ve been going through, right?”
Airin smiled, almost ruefully, and dropped their voice to little more than a whisper. “Yes, I know about the Glitch. I’ve been working with you on it for weeks. In fact, I know a lot more than you do, right this moment. Though, of course, that will change, too.”
“So you’ve been helping me fix it?”
“After a fashion, yes.”
“Yeah, sorry, that doesn’t compute. First of all, as far as I can tell, nothing has changed. If you’ve spent the past few weeks ‘helping me’, why am I still stuck going,” Nev lowered her own voice to match Airin’s, “backwards in time? And, second of all, why am I only hearing from you now? Where have you been for the past week, while I’ve been dealing with this fucked up situation on my own?”
“Nev.” Airin sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do between now and Zero Day—that’s the future for me. But I do know that we finished our coding work together yesterday, and today is the first time we’re actually having a conversation, at least from your point of view. Wow, I guess this is almost the end for me …” they trailed off. Airin turned away for a moment, like they’d seen a friend out the window. Then they turned back with a small smile and sighed. “I wouldn’t change a thing, though.”
Feeling awkward, Nev reached in her pocket for the mystery stone and flipped it back and forth in her hands.
“I wish I had one of those,” Airin said. “It always seems to bring you comfort.”
Nev looked at her hands with a start. “What do you know about my stone?”
“Remember: your future, my past; my past, your future. I’ve seen you do this before.”
Nev tried to reorient herself to the proper flow of time. After a week in the Glitch, it was a struggle to remember that Zero Day was actually ahead of Airin, not behind them. It was exhausting, trying to live in two directions at once.
They both sipped their drinks, an almost companionable silence settling between them. Nev studied Airin’s profile, illuminated in the morning sun. Somewhere outside, a dog barked.
“Well, actually, tomorrow isn’t really the last time.”
“What?” Airin turned back towards her. There was a quiet intensity about them.
“It’s not really goodbye for you. Not yet, I mean. Technically.”
“You mean, we see each other again after tomorrow night?” Something in Airin’s voice made Nev trust them even more. Genuine eagerness, but also a sadness, deep enough that she couldn’t hear the bottom of it.
“Yes, twice more, this past week. And then, after that, who knows? The first time, or, I guess, the last time, from your perspective, was the night before Zero Day, at Jimmy’s. We didn’t talk or anything, but I saw you there, watching me. I thought… I thought maybe you had something to do with the Glitch.”
“Well, you were right. I did. Technically.”
Now it was Nev’s turn to smile. She didn’t remember Airin being this warm and clever back in Stanford days. They’d always been so cool and distant, like the light from an ancient supernova that’s traveled halfway across the galaxy before trickling into your eyes.
Now, the heat in their eyes was almost incendiary.
“And you said there was a second time?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I saw you the next day. The day before. Wednesday morning. Here. At the Park Chalet. I came here on a whim and you were already sitting here. Right over there, at that table. I wondered if you were watching me and how you knew where to find me when I had no idea where I was going to be five minutes earlier,” Airin looked over, clearly making another mental note. Something dawned on Nev. “But I guess it was because… because I just told you that.”
The force of the realization hit Nev like a punch in the gut. Airin knew her. More than that, Airin knew what Nev was going through. She didn’t have to try to find the words to explain it, because apparently she’d already found those words. And Airin wanted to help. No, Airin already was helping. Nev felt an unfamiliar wetness in the corners of her eyes and before she could wipe it away, a horrible sob wracked her body. She cried ugly tears, mortified by the snot running from her nose but unable to stem the outpouring. Airin watched with a pained expression. Nev had the distinct impression that they wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, or hold her by the hand, but resisted for Nev’s sake, uncertain whether the touch would be welcome. Instead, they extended a handful of napkins for Nev to wipe her face.
“I, I’m sorry,” Nev gasped. “This is so embarrassing. I never cry like this. I just—” she hesitated, uncertain how to finish the sentence.
“You’ve just been bottling it up inside since Zero Day and have had no one to talk to about the fucking crazy situation you’re in. Honestly, Nev, I can’t believe you’ve held it together as well as you have. I would have lost my shit a long time ago.”
The kindness of Airin’s words sent Nev into a new cascade of tears. She could feel the stares of the restaurant’s other customers, and was dimly aware of Airin gesturing the waiter away, making space for Nev to regain her composure. When she finally caught her breath, words took the place of sobs and Nev was pouring out the story to Airin of everything that had happened since the Glitch. By the time she finished, her drink had gone cold.
“So what do we do now?” Nev asked, pushing the cup away from her.
“Order you a fresh hot chocolate?”
Nev actually laughed. It felt good.
“No, you know what I mean. Although, a hot hot chocolate does sound good.”
Airin waved over the waiter and placed the order, adding on a cheese plate (“we’re going to be here for a while”).
“The first thing we have to do,” they said, “is work out our protocols. How we’re going to work together when you’re moving backwards and I’m moving forwards. It’s not so easy, as I’ve learned. Especially since you can’t write anything down one day and have it to read the next futurepast day. Good thing you never forget numbers.”
Nev blushed a little at the praise, then scolded herself. No time for vanity. No need to clothe herself in scarlet and deck herself with ornaments of gold. Better just to focus on the situation at hand.
“So, how do we handle it?” Nev asked. “I guess you already know the answer?”
“The basic principle is straightforward. We take each day on its own. We don’t share a future, we don’t share a past, we only have the present. Each day, each of us has to tell the other where our next meeting will be. I’ll tell you where we met the day before, you tell me where we meet the next day. Since the code has to be built from the foundation up, I have to run the project. You have to trust me and follow my instructions.”
Nev felt a tiny tongue of suspicion flare up again in her chest, and Airin nodded slightly, as if they could see it.
“For now. In the past it was the other way around, you’ll see what I mean,” Airin said reassuringly. “There are two key constraints: I can’t go to Qbito, and you can’t go past 23:33:43. If I’m going to give you instructions for a day’s coding package, it has to be in the morning before you go to work. You need to get to Qbito with enough time to get through the package before 11:33pm.”
“Wait, wait,” Nev said. “Slow down. I’m trying to follow, but I don’t understand—how can I code on foundations that I haven’t yet built?”
“You have built them already. You’re the one who designed the program.”
“Well, can you tell me what we’ve built, so I understand what I’m doing each day?”
A mournful look passed over Airin’s face. They shook their head, schooling their features into bland neutrality.
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You have to have the idea yourself.”
“Why? Who cares whose idea it is? Or was?”
“Sorry, babe.”
Babe? Not in a million years would Nev have imagined that the infamous Airin Myx would be calling her by endearments. But that mystery paled in comparison to the bigger questions swarming through her head.
“Come on. You have to tell me more. What the fuck are we working on?”
The expression on Airin’s face softened a bit under Nev’s importunate gaze.
“You know I wouldn’t have expected it, but I’m really going to miss that angry face you make. I bet it’s a spitting image of your mama.”
Nev tried to protest but Airin waved away her objections with a practiced hand. “Keep that angry feeling for the next time you see me, when I show you the code we’ve been working on. You’re going to need that fire in your belly. Now let’s get down to business. This Humboldt Fog isn’t going to eat itself.”