The Chronoliths Read Online Free PDF Page A

possibilities, and by Wednesday I had bribed my way into a one-bedroom walkup just west of the Twin Cities Agricultural Enclave. The room was unfurnished. I bought a chair, a table, and a bed. Anything more would have been a confession of permanency. I decided I was “in transition.” Then I looked for a job. I didn’t call Janice, at least not right away, because I wanted something to show her, first, some token of my credibility: an income, for example. If there had been a merit badge for Good Citizenship I would have applied for that, too.
    Of course, none of this helped. There is no retrieving the past, a fact the reader almost surely understands. The younger generation knows these things better than my peers ever did. The knowledge has been forced on them.
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    By February of 2022 Janice and Kaitlin had moved into a pleasant suburban co-op, far from Janice’s work but close to good schools. The divorce contract we had finalized in December included a custody agreement that gave me Kaitlin for an average of one week per month.
    Janice had been reasonable about sharing Kait, and I had seen a fair amount of my daughter since the fall. I was scheduled to have Kait this Saturday. But a day together mandated by a divorce court isn’t just a day together. It’s something else. Strange, awkward, and uncomfortable.
    I showed up at Janice’s at 8:45, a sunny but viciously cold Saturday morning. Janice invited me into her home and told me Kait was at a friend’s house, watching morning cartoons until the appointed hour.
    The co-op apartment had a pleasant odor of fresh broadloom and recent breakfast. Janice, in her weekend-morning blouse and denims, poured me a cup of coffee. It seemed to me that we had reached a sort of rapprochement… that we might even have enjoyed seeing each other, if not for the baggage of pain and recrimination each of us carried into the other’s presence. Not to mention bruised affection, forlorn hope, and muted grief.
    Janice sat down with the coffee table between us. She had left a couple of her antiques on the table in a faux-casual display. She collected printed-paper magazines from the last century,
Life
and
Time
and so on. They lay in their stiff plastic wrappers like advertisements for a lost age, ticket stubs from the
Titanic
. “You’re still at Campion-Miller?” she asked.
    “Another six-month contract.” And a 3k re-up bonus. At this rate my net income might someday advance all the way from Entry Level to Junior Employee. I had spent most of that bonus on a widescreen entertainment panel so Kait and I could watch movies together. Before Christmas I’d been relying on my portable station for both work and entertainment.
    “So it’s looking long-term.”
    “As such things go.” I sipped from the cup she had given me. “The coffee’s lousy, by the way.”
    “Oh?”
    “You always made very bad coffee.”
    Janice smiled. “And now you can bring yourself to tell me about it?”
    “Mm-hm.”
    “All those years, you hated my coffee?”
    “I didn’t say I hated it. I said it was bad.”
    “You never turned down a cup.”
    “No. I never did.”
    Kaitlin came in from the neighbors’—crashed through the front door in dripping plastic boots and a pleated winter jacket. Her glasses immediately frosted over with condensation. The glasses were a new addition. Kaitlin was only modestly nearsighted, but they don’t do corrective surgery on children as young as Kait. She swiped her lenses with her fingers and gazed at me owlishly.
    Kait used to give me a big smile whenever she saw me coming. She still smiled at me. But not automatically.
    Janice said, “Did you see your cartoons, love?”
    “No.” Kait’s eyes remained fixed on me. “Mr. Levy wanted to see the news.”
    It didn’t occur to me to ask why Janice’s neighbor had insisted on seeing the news.
    But then, if I had asked, I might have missed an afternoon with Kait.
    “Have fun with