Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Vacuuming, or rather, traditional vacuuming requiring both a noisy, power hungry machine and a human administrator had generally been replaced in the modern household, but Elle never felt that the spring cleaning was thoroughly completed without it. No housekeeping automaton ever did a satisfactory job. Elle was meticulous and methodical, a perfectionist. She was the hybrid product of generations of traditional family values and new world expectations, having been born in early February of year zero in the New World Era.

The nwe had been introduced by the Chinese government to replace the Gregorian calendar. The Chinese had lobbied to set the nwe New Year to September seventeenth – an obvious choice. Everyone old enough to remember that day recalled with fear or fondness their memories of September seventeenth – the day that Deng Zhifang stepped from the top of the Jing Guang Center in Beijing and stood in mid-air two hundred meters above the ground for three hours boldly ushering in the age of the extra-human movement. Most of Asia supported the new calendar immediately, but the West held out for years until a compromise was reached. Eventually, the world agreed to renumber the years starting on January first following the infamous September seventeenth. Thus had the New World Era (nwe) superceded Anno Domini (ad).

Deng had been the first person to publicly exhibit an extra-human ability and had become the anecdotal father of all those who began to display their powers or gifts. Deng himself was neither responsible for nor directly related to the proliferation of gifts. He was simply the first.

Though only twenty-seven years had passed since that historic day, the world had been radically transformed. People with extra-human abilities began to be identified throughout the globe. In the beginning, they were labeled freaks, and fear caused the masses to create conspiracy theories regarding their being and their purpose. Within a decade political correctness began to take hold and the gifted as they were being called became as accepted as well any other human minority. There were some occasional local problems between the gifted and their neighbors, but for the most part, human life continued on undeterred.

Elle had identified her gift early in life. She was seven years old and outgoing. She spoke with everyone and had a genuine interest in people that surpassed her age. At dinner one evening with her family, she engaged in a conversation with the waitress. She spoke with the waitress, Marta Gutierrez, learning of Marta’s recent emigration from Guatemala and the plight of her husband and children who were left behind because of limited finances. After a moment, Elle stopped. She had caught a glimpse of her father and his expression was so unexpected that she was unable to continue. He stared at her for a moment. She wondered if she had done something wrong. She was entirely unable to read his expression. After a moment of stunned silence he asked her where she had learned to speak Spanish. Her gift was the gift of tongues as her father called it, he being an especially religious man and finding comfort in the fact that the proliferation of gifts in the world was easier to accept if you took a religious approach to it.

Elle smiled as she recalled the initial look of shock on her father’s face. In nearly twenty years, she had never forgotten it. The image had burned into her memory and fundamentally affected how she felt about her gift. She loved her dad. He was a sweet and loving father, but he never completely came to terms with his Elle’s gift. He accepted gifts and persons with gifts in the same way that his grandfather had treated people of color.

In high school and college, Elle rarely mentioned her gift, though she had every opportunity to join the rallies and the sit-ins during the years of the gifted-rights activism. Elle chose rather to focus on her personal life and the future she had imagined from her childhood. She really wanted a nice home, a good husband, and happy children. In her junior year of college, she found that man. He was an accountant from a large, established family and he was a traditional human, non-gifted. He treated Elle well, and he accepted her gift with approximately the same enthusiasm as her father had. They never spoke of it.

This morning, after the vacuuming was finished, Elle started toward the stairs to check on the twins. They had been playing upstairs most of the morning, but it had grown quiet, and that was always an indicator of mischief. As she passed the front door, she heard a light tapping on the door. She stopped. There was another knock. She turned and opened the door.

As her eyes adjusted to the bright Phoenix sunlight pouring through the crack in the doorway, she recognized the man standing expectantly before her. She smiled and threw the door open. In a fraction of a second, the whole world around her paused. The rush of air through the doorway stuck in its spot, and the door froze in place, open just wide enough for Elle to get a complete look at the man she had not seen since her freshman literature class – the only other gifted that she had personally known. It had been just eight years since they last spoke, but he stood before her looking as though more than thirty had passed.

“Danny?” she asked.

He smiled and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture that clearly said “I know how I must look”. “Yeah,” he responded, “it’s me.”

Elle turned quickly to the antique grandfather clock that stood in the entryway and checked the movement of the pendulum. It was stopped, but not stopped because it had run down; the pendulum was stopped mid-swing, at nearly the highest point of its cycle. She turned back to Danny. She began to say something, but the words stuck somewhere between her head and her mouth, leaving her with nothing but a few monosyllabic sounds.

Danny smiled. “I’ve learned how to control it,” he said nonchalantly. “I was wondering if you have a minute.”

Elle stumbled. Her husband Mark was in the den. He had been working from home lately and though he would probably be in there for several hours, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being found with Danny. Mark had never liked Danny. They disagreed on nearly everything political and social, and Danny was gifted.

“Let me ask that again,” Danny said as he perceived the struggle in Elle. “How would you feel about spending some time with me, assuming it’s only a fraction of a second in the real world? Really, not more than a nanosecond, I promise.” Danny grinned and stretched his arm out to point at a hummingbird locked in mid-air, completely motionless.

Elle smiled and shook her head, but walked through the door. “One nanosecond,” she smiled. She had always liked Danny. He was the kind of person that made everyone feel comfortable. He was confident enough with himself to be self deprecating at times, and he had a great sense of humor.

They walked together to a small park opposite Elle’s home where they could sit in the shade of a large Jacaranda. Elle marveled at the sight of the world around her. There was no motion whatsoever. People stood frozen in their activities. Children hung in midair swings their joyful giggles frozen with them. The silence was palpable.

Elle had known Danny’s gift, but she had never experienced it before. He had told her years ago that he could alter his perception of time. He could live through events as quickly or as slowly has he preferred, but he had been isolated in it, unable to demonstrate the ability to anyone else.

In college he was a prankster and his gift was a perfect tool for him. Elle had gone out with Danny a few times and they always had fun, but Elle was looking for something else then. He seemed to have no future, no direction. Elle on the other hand was a planner and she had goals and she had schedules. She knew at the beginning of each week when she would go to the gym, when she would be country dancing, and when she would be baking a batch of chocolate-chip cookies to enjoy with a movie. She liked knowing where her life was going. Danny just didn’t seem to care about such things. He seemed sincerely interested in their friendship, possibly more, but he could never be rushed. She eventually met Mark, and her friendship with Danny withered.

As they continued, Elle found it almost more surreal to be walking casually with Danny than to be part of a world devoid of time. He looked good as an older man. His dark hair had not receded and his gray-green eyes were bright and lively. Elle noticed that he had filled out, growing from the skinny, average-height twenty-year old that she had known into a broad-shouldered and muscular average-height man.

Elle considered for a moment how to break the silence. Danny seemed to be unrushed and fully comfortable in his stop-motion world, but for Elle it was becoming nearly claustrophobic. “You look...” she began.

“Old?” Danny interjected.

“I was going to say you look well, but since you’ve mentioned it...”

Danny chuckled and drew a long breath. His eyes gazed out at the distance reflecting some depth of age that was difficult to pinpoint. He squinted then closed his eyes. “I’ve spent about thirty years, I think, working on this,” he said, raising a hand and motioning at nothing in general. “It took a long time to figure out how to include someone else in my timeframe. And I’ve been reflecting...”

“On what?”

“Opportunities lost.”

Elle studied Danny’s face. He spoke a little slower than most people. He seemed to be more deliberate than anyone else she knew. His eyes were still closed.

“Do you remember Dr. Nagy?” Danny asked.

“From biology? Yes, how could I forget him?” Elle answered. Dr. Nagy had been a vocal proponent of the gifted. He had been somewhat too outspoken for Elle and a little too pushy.

“He always said that our gifts were available to anyone ... anyone who was willing to open their mind to the possibilities.”

“And he said that the gifted should rise above their oppressors and shun their critics,” Elle added. “It always sounded like a battle cry to me.”

Danny raised an eyebrow, but continued in his soft-spoken reverie. “I spent a lot of time with Dr. Nagy. He didn’t want a war. He taught me more than anyone I’ve known. He opened my eyes to the truth of the gifts. He was right. We’re all capable of so much more. We limit ourselves arbitrarily, but we can grow beyond our boundaries ... if we’re patient.”

Elle stared at Danny, studying the age of his face. “So what did you learn by sacrificing thirty years of your life in a decade?”

“More than I can tell you in a nanosecond,” Danny replied. He opened his eyes and looked at Elle. He smiled. “But I don’t view it as a sacrifice. I needed thirty years to learn how to do the only thing I have ever really wanted to do with my life. So, for me, it has been a labor of love, an opportunity to seize the only thing that I consider to be of any value. I’ve not missed anything that I would have otherwise done by forging ahead with a mundane career. I’ve not languished because I’m not lobbying with the pro-gifters at the United Nations. I don’t regret missing out on the joys of a mortgage, income taxes and recreational vehicles. Mine has been a life with purpose.”

Elle waited for Danny to continue. It seemed obvious to her that he was going to reveal the purpose that had driven him and it seemed anxious to request it.

“Tell me about your life,” Danny redirected.

Elle shrugged. “Not much to tell. Happily married, three kids, one dog and a nice home.” Elle winced at the sound of her own voice replaying the same words she had heard herself speak so many times. She was happy. She was comfortable. She was satisfied with where she was and where she was going. But to summarize her existence in a ten-word sound bite always reminded her that somewhere deep within herself there was a longing for something just a little more. Not more in the traditional sense: more money, more home, more stuff, but more in a personal and fundamental sense. She had been driven and passionate when she was younger, but that drive and passion were not fully reflected in her life.

“Do you ever use your gifts?”

“No, not really.” Elle replied, glancing down at the grass as she twisted a small tuft of it through her fingers. “I can still read just about anything I see, but I’m finding it more and more difficult to understand and speak some of the languages I used to know.”

“Does Mark know?”

“That I’m gifted? Of course.” Elle shifted, subconsciously trying to find a way to make herself feel more comfortable discussing such an uncomfortable topic.

“No, that you’re losing your gift.”

“No, he doesn’t like to talk about it.” Elle glanced back up at Danny, catching his eyes. He seemed to be staring right through her. His eyes were piercing and alive, filled with a brightness that itself was nothing short of inspirational. Elle waited. It seemed that Danny had matured far beyond his years and she felt unusually comfortable waiting for him considering the odd circumstances of their conversation.

“Dr. Nagy believed that gifts could atrophy if unused. It was the corollary to his belief that anyone can acquire gifts or learn new ways to use existing gifts.”

Elle shrugged. She really didn’t want to talk about it. “So, what about the rest of your life? There’s more to it than just this, I assume. I mean, it’s amazing, but stopping time doesn’t fill your life. It’s not rewarding in itself.”

“I tried to live a normal life for a while,” Danny started. “I met someone.” He paused and checked Elle’s eyes for any hint of response. “We met at a freak convention. Her name was Faye, but everyone called her Tia – a reference to an old movie she said. She was a telepath or empath or one of those. I’m not good with the classifications, but she could read thoughts and emotions. She could also transfer thoughts and emotions to other people. We had a little fun, but...” Danny laughed softly and looked more directly at Elle. “Imagine how tough it was to have a relationship with me back then if you could read my thoughts. I liked her, but ... well, she needed more than I could give her then.”

“So, that’s it? You tried to live a normal life, had one relationship and then just threw in the towel?”

“You could say that,” Danny replied stoically. “I think I did initially retreat from life to a place that I felt more comfortable. I like the quiet.” There was a long pause and Danny seemed to study something in the distance. “But I worked through that. Then I focused on expanding my gifts. Tia had given me insight into so many things with her gift. But mostly I realized that I wanted to share this gift, to show the world how to slow down, to find pleasure in simpler things.”

“But to live in seclusion? How does that help anyone?”

Danny smiled. “I hope no one follows my path, but I do hope that people can take my gift and use it to find more real joy in life. There are a precious few moments in life in which every person longs to extend, to hold. The birth of a child, a first kiss, a perfect dawn. Imagine the joy of taking any one of these and holding it in time long enough to forge a perfect memory, one that is so enduring and powerful that it begs to be shared. Then imagine being able to share that memory with those closest to you and have them experience it with all of the feeling and intensity you could give them. Perhaps we could all really learn how to live together on this manic planet.”

Elle sat in silence. Her mind raced through the precious moments of her own life. She wanted to respond, but felt it impossible to formulate a sentence that did justice to her feelings. Words trivialize moments that truly touch the heart. She smiled. “That would be nice,” she whispered. She let her gaze wander to the distance.

Danny watched Elle intently as she obviously drew inward and considered things wonderfully personal. He studied her face, willing his mind to forge a lasting memory of her in that moment of her reflection. He watched as she leaned back slightly and drew a deep breath. As much as he longed to stay in that moment, he respected her and her life enough to let her go. “Our nanosecond is about up,” he said and smiled.

“Yeah,” Elle replied, “I probably should get back.”

As they walked slowly back toward Elle’s home, Danny drifted into thought. He opened his mouth three times as if he wanted to say something, but never managed to get the words out.

“So,” Elle broke the silence, “what’s next for you?”

“Nothing.”

“Back into seclusion?” Elle asked voicing obvious frustration.

“No,” Danny replied solemnly. “I have no time left.” He smiled to himself at the irony of his situation.

“What?”

“No time left,” Danny reiterated. “It seems that I’ve used my full allocation,” he said.

“But you’re still young,” Elle defended. “You can’t be more than fifty by normal standards.”

“Apparently the human body isn’t designed to live this way,” Danny said. “I can just feel it. The end. It’s not far off.”

Elle stopped. “And so that’s it. You finally found your answers and now it’s over? I thought you were going to go teach people about what you learned.”

Danny hesitated. He looked deep into Elle’s deep green eyes and studied her for a moment. “I was hoping you would do it for me.”

Elle stepped back. She had become so disconnected from that world. She had a family and a house and a dog. She had a life and she was happy. Or at least she was happy enough. She thought about Mark and how it would upset him. How it would upset their lives. She thought about the kids. They would be torn from the ranks of the normal kids and thrown into the world of the gifted – whether they were or not.

“I need someone,” Danny said.

“What about Tia? Isn’t there someone else?” Elle stumbled with words as her thoughts raced. “I just don’t think ... my whole life would be ...”

“Tia died in an accident,” Danny replied. “I don’t know anyone else. And...” he glanced at his feet.

Elle sensed hesitation in Danny for the first time in their conversation. He had been so confident, so sure. “What?” she asked.

“I’ve been preparing it for you,” he answered.

Elle shook her head. “I can’t go back into that world.”

“There is no one else.”

“I can’t.”

Danny forced a smile to cover his disappointment. “Before I go, then, will you allow me one question?”

Elle sighed. She clearly saw the disappointment reflected in Danny’s aged features and she felt the pangs of regret for rejecting his request. “Yes,” she answered.

“And will you answer honestly?” he confirmed.

Elle half smiled and shrugged. She knew from experience that whenever a person asks for an honest answer, giving one would be difficult. She nodded.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

It was the most difficult question and the simplest. In the briefest moment she poured over the years of experiences and the expectations and the emotions of her life. She was happy of course. And yet at the same time she considered the deeper question, was she as happy as she could possibly be? Had she achieved all that she had hoped? Had she achieved all that she was capable of achieving? She wondered how others rate their own happiness. Do people consider only their current state, or do they necessarily consider their innate potential when weighing in on the happiness scale?

“You would have to ask me that,” Elle finally replied, attempting to lighten her mood and defer the answer.

“May I?” Danny asked, lifting both hands slightly in front of him clearly indicating that he wanted to hold Elle’s hands, as if to lead her somewhere.

Elle hesitated. She thought of Mark.

Danny stood patiently. He looked at her. He studied her. He gazed into her beautiful green eyes and mentally noted the fall of her hair around the edge of her face. Her hair was shorter than he had remembered, but dark and still dancing on her shoulders. Her smile lit him up inside. It was her smile that had first caught his attention those many years ago.

Shunning her hesitation, Elle reached both hands forward and gently placed her hands in his. In an instant she was aware of a much larger world. She perceived thoughts that were not her own and heard memories of other people, strangers and old friends. The rush of thoughts and feelings accelerated and became nearly tangible – a noise of confusion both exhilarating and frightening at the same time.

Then there was quiet and like a dream, distinct images and conversations arose. Danny was there and she was there. They were alone and it was peaceful. Danny seemed to be speaking, but the words didn’t seem to be intended to be heard, but rather understood or felt in a way that transcended verbal communication. She watched and listened and felt the emotions of a lifetime – Danny’s lifetime. In a fraction of a moment Elle understood Danny. She understood his whole life and his purpose. She understood his gifts and could comprehend his whole purpose of being. And she felt his love.

In a wave of emotion unlike anything she had ever experienced, Elle felt Danny’s perfect love. He loved her with a depth that could not be spoken. He cared for her in a way that could not be expressed in a lifetime. His love was far more than a physical attraction. It endured life and death and time. He had literally sacrificed his life that he might discover a way to express that love perfectly, a way that would convey not only his emotion but his intent. His intent was her happiness, nothing more or less. He had no intent of disrupting her life and sincerely hoped that she would find enduring happiness in the life she had chosen.

In a split-second of time that was so long that it could not be measured, Elle received a new lifetime of experience, love and perfect happiness. She felt more beautiful and more respected and more understood than she had ever felt. As quickly as it had begun, the whirlwind of interconnectedness dissipated. For an instant Elle thought she saw Danny age another twenty years as he released her hands. The evanescent image of his last smile hung briefly before her, then she blinked and he was gone.

Looking around, Elle found herself again standing at her front door. The sounds of life had been restored. A hummingbird fluttered past the entryway. Elle wiped a tear from her eye and stepped into her home.

She would teach the world patience and love, and she would be truly happy.