Phase Shift (2 of 6)
Theory
“Explain this again,” Mira said. “Bearing in mind that I still think you’re full of crap.”
Theo shrugged, unbothered.
“You’re trying to collect energy from PSR J2045+25—your own discovery. What makes it unique isn’t just that it’s a pulsar. It’s the fastest known rotation we’ve observed that close to Earth. A collapsed neutron star spinning seventy-one times a second. And you’re the first to figure out how to extract usable energy from that kind of rotational output.”
“I haven’t collected anything yet,” she snapped. “I’ve just run simulations. I’m not even sure it’s possible.”
“Right,” Theo said. “But I know what you’re thinking. You’re treating the north pole’s beam—mostly positrons—and the south pole’s—mostly electrons—as a natural oscillation. A dipolar EM field with enough symmetry to harness.”
Mira raised an eyebrow. “In lay terms, that’s more or less accurate. But it’s not truly symmetrical. It’s a waveform. A complex one.”
“Sure. And you’re thinking of it like a rotating capacitor.”
“Exactly. Focused, collected here, stored in batteries for daytime use. At full efficiency, I could power all of Quito. Maybe more.”
“You could do a lot more than that. And that’s the problem.” He took a breath. “The pattern is perfect, but the symmetry isn’t. That pulse differential creates a feedback loop—an exponential one.”
“So… I blow something up?” she asked.
“No. Nothing so dramatic. Not at first. Over a decade, you scale up. You build more arrays. You power remote regions. You change the energy economy of half the planet.”
Mira frowned. “Which sounds good,” she said.
“It is good. Until it isn’t. Because the feedback doesn’t just amplify energy. It starts to distort spacetime.”
She blinked.
“That’s not possible,” she said, crossing to the console, tapping the pulsar screen—71 Hz, steady. “Spacetime distortion? Show me the equations—feedback doesn’t scale like that.”
“It is possible and it does happen. It just takes time to notice. I can’t give you equations. I’m not a scientist. You are. But I can tell you where to look. It takes two centuries to get where we are in my time, but by then, it’s too late. The distortion begins subtly, but its effect compounds. People… start vanishing. Not dying. Not migrating. Just—erased.
“Erased?”
“From time. From memory. Half the world’s population, gone. Never born. Never known. Like they never existed.”
“It’s a fascinating tale,” she said, surprised to find herself seated beside him on the futon.
“It’s not a tale,” he said, staring at her with eyes too steady.
“Surely you can see this from my perspective,” she said. “You show up in a blizzard, half-naked, quoting physics and prophecy—what am I supposed to do, just believe you?”
“Of course you don’t. But maybe I can convince you anyway.”
“How?”
He hesitated. “Let’s talk about the love letters.”
She blinked.
“Letters?”
“The ones you write on your laptop. To a lover you’ve never met.”
Her blood ran cold. She bolted upright, grabbed her laptop from the desk, and clutched it to her chest. “How the hell do you know about those? How did you get them—hacked my laptop? Answer me!”
Theo looked away. “I’ve read them all,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“We preserved everything. Your writings. Your journals. Your code. We had to understand the timeline. I had to understand you.”
“They’re private!”
“They were,” he said. “But not in the future.”
She turned, whispering to herself: “This is insane.”
“I already know what they say,” he said softly. “I’ve read ones you haven’t even written yet.”
“I—” She stopped. “That’s not possible.”
Theo closed his eyes, then quoted:
“My lover. One day I will find you. I will give everything of myself to you. I will surrender. I want to surrender. You’ll be my everything. I’ll be yours.”
She froze.
“I wrote that last year.”
“I know.”
“How did you get it?”
“You already know. You just haven’t accepted it.”
He cleared his throat.
“Here’s another.” And then, as if pulling it from the air:
I see the dawn rising behind the mountains,
I realize I am alone on this futon again.
I wait for the morning when the sun rises over us,
Together, having spent the night entwined.
I see the sunset falling into the sea,
I am alone on my futon, wanting to fall into
the sea of your eyes at night and be taken by your kisses.
A long pause.
“I wrote that Thursday,” she whispered. “Two days ago.”
“Really?” he asked. “That recently.”
She didn’t answer. She just clutched her laptop tighter, her knuckles white.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said softly.
“Don’t be.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“No, it’s not,” he replied, quietly. “You want to know what you write about next?”
She looked at him sharply.
“Wouldn’t that change what I write? Wouldn’t that mean I don’t write it? If you tell me, doesn’t that collapse the timeline? Doesn’t it mean you never read them, and you don’t know them now to quote them back to me?”
“Possible,” he said. “But I do know them. So you didn’t stop. Not even after the next one.”
The dryer buzzer went off—sharp, jarring.
A reprieve.
“I’ll get it,” he said, starting to rise.
“No.” She stopped him. “Sit. I need a moment.”
In the laundry room, Mira gathered his clothing—jeans and a flannel shirt. They looked laughably ordinary. Like props from a 1990s nostalgia ad.
She reached back into the dryer and cursed. She hadn’t thought this through.
T-shirt. Socks. Underwear.
Damn it.
She used the pants to lift them, trying not to touch them directly. But then she stopped.
The underwear wasn’t cotton. Not quite synthetic, either. It shimmered faintly, almost… iridescent. The texture was impossibly soft.
She ran her fingers across it before she could stop herself.
And shivered.
Clearing her throat, she blinked hard, gathered everything into a single bundle, and marched back to the control room, determined to confront him again. To reassert control.
But when she stepped inside and saw him—sitting calmly, looking up at her like he knew—the words fled her. She slowed. Handed him the bundle.
“Thank you,” he said. “But you didn’t need to do that.”
She turned away as he stood, listening to the whisper of fabric as he dressed.
“What’s the next one?” she asked quietly, eyes averted.
A pause.
“Now I don’t know if I should say it.”
“Please?” she asked. Half-turned toward him, then stopped, seeing the shirt still in his hand.
“Okay,” he said.
“My lips linger on the birthmark of my lover.
A patch of skin. I like to think it looks like a heart.
I kiss it with wonder, not understanding how he came to me—
but accepting it as a gift from the gods, until it faded away."
She shivered.
It was her. Her words. Her longing. But she hadn’t written it. At last not yet.
“I’ve always loved your letters,” Theo said, voice soft.
“You have?”
“How could I not?”
She turned.
He was halfway through pulling the shirt over his shoulders. When he saw her watching, he stopped.
“What are you doing?” she asked, breath catching.
“Just be patient,” he said. “You’ll understand.”
She tried not to watch. She really did.
But she watched.
He folded the shirt over the futon, and turned around.
And there it was.
Between his shoulder blades, just below the nape of his neck: a birthmark. Small, dark, imperfect. But unmistakably a heart. Not a cartoonish heart—something more primal. Vaguely anatomical. Like a mark burned in by fate.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
He slipped the shirt back on, slowly, buttoning as he sat.
She didn’t move.
“I’ve always believed,” he said. “That your letters were to me. I knew before you knew. And I’m two hundred years younger than you.”
He smiled—not smug, not triumphant. Just… in awe.
“That’s why I volunteered to come. Despite the risk. Despite everything.” Then softer: “I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen years old.”
“Don’t toy with me,” she said. Her voice wasn’t sharp. It was small. Worn. “Please don’t do that.”
Theo didn’t smile. Didn’t flinch.
“I’m not.” He looked down at his hands. “You think this was easy? Coming here? Knowing you’d think I was a liar, or worse? That you’d be angry, or terrified, or—heartbroken?” He looked up again. “But I had to. I had to see you.”
Mira crossed her arms, laptop still cradled against her ribs like armor. She shook her head. “You don’t know me. You only know about me. My papers. My writing. My loneliness.”
Theo stood slowly, careful not to make it feel like a threat. “I know your silence at midnight. I know the sound of the keys when you’re typing something you’re scared to say out loud. I know how many drafts you save before deleting them all. I know the playlists you make and never share. I know the coffee mug you keep in the corner—chipped, because it belonged to your mother.”
Her breath caught.
“You read everything,” she whispered.
He nodded once.
“But that’s not love,” she said, voice brittle. “That’s data collection.”
“Totally fair. It started as that.”
He stepped closer.
“But I don’t love you because I know all those things. I love you because even knowing them, I still want more. I want to hear you tell them. I want to see how you laugh when no one’s watching. I want the things the files never captured.”
She turned away, eyes burning.
“We don't know each other,” she said.
"I feel like we do," he said. "The things you wrote before this moment. Before I came here. Still felt like they were about me."
"They weren't about you. They weren't about anyone. They were about me. About what I wanted."
"About what you needed," Theo said. "But what if what you needed was me?"
She shook her head, arms tight around her chest. “You’re not him.” Her voice wavered. “He’s just the shape I gave to a longing I didn’t understand.”
Theo didn’t argue. He just stood there, still. Present. “Maybe,” he said softly. “But I’m here. And you don't have to be alone anymore.”
She flinched at that—like the word itself hurt. “You don’t get to say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t wait for me. You just arrived. You skipped the years. The ache. The silence. You didn’t earn this.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”
A beat passed. The wind howled outside the dome, gusting against the structure like it wanted in.
“But I’ve felt the ache in reverse,” he said. “I grew up reading what you hadn’t written yet. Loving someone who wouldn’t know I existed. Wanting to change the past, but being told not to. Being told it would cost too much.” He stepped closer, just enough for her to feel his presence behind her. “But I came anyway. Because you’re worth the risk.”
She didn’t answer. Just stared her laptop, its black surface reflecting a distorted outline of her face. One she didn’t recognize.
After a moment, she said, barely above a whisper: “What if I can’t believe you?”
He paused, then gently: “Then let me be someone who stays, until you can. In the meantime, don't turn on that collector.”
It wasn't a demand, nor was he begging. He was simply offering to be here. The only ask was that she not do her experiments. What could be the motivation for that? Why the elaborate lies? What could he want?
But more disturbing than that—far more than his claims of spacetime collapse or vanished timelines—was the way it felt like she’d known him all her life.
And that scared her.
“It’s three o’clock,” she said. “I really need to sleep. But I’m here with a stranger. It’s storming outside. I probably won’t sleep. But I need to try.”
“Me too,” Theo said.
“The futon is mine,” she added. “Don’t get any funny ideas just because you think you’ve loved me since you were fifteen. That hasn’t even happened yet. So forget about it.”
He laughed.
“I’ll be fine on the floor. I saw extra blankets in the laundry room.”
She woke around 4:30. The room was dark, the power-hungry equipment humming softly.
Theo was curled up with his back to a row of computers, likely drawing warmth from their steady output. His head was resting on his own shoulder—uncomfortably.
She watched him for a minute.
Then, without overthinking, she padded across the room, knelt beside him, and touched his back.
He stirred, blinking groggily.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Come to the futon. There’s room.”
He didn’t speak. He just came.
“Just stay on your own side, okay?”
“Sure,” he said sleepily.
Mira woke again around 7:30—later than usual. But it had been a long, strange night.
What surprised her wasn’t the hour. It was the warmth.
She was cradled in his arms. And she was more on his side than her own.
One of his arms was wrapped beneath her. One over. Her head on his shoulder. And somehow—impossibly—one of his strong thighs was between hers.
For a brief moment, she panicked. Then… didn’t. Because it wasn’t just warmth. It was presence. Anchoring. Security.
And then it hit her. She’d written about this. The dream. The longing. The exact feeling of waking, entwined in someone she hadn’t met yet. This wasn’t a coincidence. It was an answer.
She should’ve pulled away. She should’ve untangled herself and retreated into logic.
But instead, she breathed him in. There was something in him—strength was the only word that fit. Not just in his arms, or his chest, or the leg between hers.
It radiated from him. Like some pheromonal truth she hadn’t known she needed. And if it weren’t for the burning ache to touch him… or be touched by him…she might have been content.
When he turned over, she felt the loss like a pulled thread—sudden, sharp. His thigh slid away from hers. His warmth shifted. Now, with his back to her, the intimacy seemed shattered in an excruciating way.
But she wasn’t ready to give it up. So she shifted closer, curling her smaller frame against his much larger one—becoming, impossibly, the big spoon. If such a term even applied when he was a foot taller than her.
She tucked herself against him, arranging the blanket to cover them both. His back against her chest. Her arm draped gently across his waist. And warmth returned, creeping back like a tide.
She nearly fell asleep again. But then her eyes opened—and settled on the birthmark just below the nape of his neck. That imperfect heart. It was magnetic. Her lips found it without permission, drawn to it by some gravity more ancient than logic.
She kissed it. Softly. Reverently.
Theo moaned—barely audible.
She pulled back instinctively, unsure, holding still for a half-minute as his breathing returned to a steady rhythm. Then—unable to help herself—she pressed her face against his back. Not just her lips this time, but her whole cheek. Her breath warming his skin.
She kept it there. Eyes closed. Body still. As if trying to memorize the feeling in case it all disappeared.
About two hours later, she felt him stir. The futon shifted. He slipped away carefully, quietly.
A minute later, she smelled coffee.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.