Zero Moment by M. G. Harris

Author:M. G. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

We finish our juice and wind our way back to the apartment where Montoyo’s thrown my stuff. I can’t think of it as “my place” yet. But being the one who leads Tyler around Ek Naab—even if I do make a couple of wrong turns on the way—makes me feel strangely at home.

No one tries to talk to us. Sometimes, when people don’t think I’m looking, I notice them staring at us—especially me. It makes me wonder what sort of information is out there about me. What have they heard?

Back at the apartment, I open my suitcase and take out the two books by John Lloyd Stephens that Montoyo gave me. Tyler has been asking me about how I solved the code with the chemical formula of the Crystal Key. I show him how the cipher works, and talk him through the solution.

“So that’s it, then? Those fifteen letters?”

“Lorena said ‘amino acids.’ That’s some kind of chemical, isn’t it? We did it in biology. I guess each letter means a different amino acid.”

“But why? Why is Arcadio putting that in this book?”

I shrug. Right now I’m off the whole idea. If Lorena—with all her labs—can’t make the Crystal Key, what hope do I have? “I don’t know, Tyler. I don’t even know who Arcadio is.”

But Tyler won’t let it go. “He’s written this same thing in all those other books? That’s what Montoyo said, right?”

I nod. Tyler looks down and touches the final page of the book where Arcadio scrawled the quotation.

“And he’s got a quote, right, from this Calvino guy, from 1979?”

“‘I would like to swim against the stream of time …’ That one, yes.”

“But what this says, right, is that he wants to go back in time and change something, something that went wrong. But new things keep happening in his life … and things change. And he can’t figure out which is the moment he needs to go back to … the zero moment … the point in time where …”

“… where his fate changes,” I finish. “Yeah … that’s what he’s saying.”

It’s not the first time those words set off a tingle inside me. Interesting that Tyler should notice something too.

“So he’s talking about time travel, isn’t he? This Arcadio—he’s another time traveler!”

I nod. “It looks that way.”

“You think he’s actually … Itzamna?”

“Great minds think alike, dude,” I tell him with a slight grin. “That’s my theory, anyway. Arcadio disappears, we know that much.”

“Disappears?”

“Uh-huh. Susannah St. John met Arcadio when they were both young. They had a ‘thing.’ Then one day, he never came back.”

“What would happen, Josh, if that Bracelet thing broke? If the crystal got busted. You’d get stranded in time, right?”

I feel a crackle of excitement. “Unless …”

Tyler looks as excited as me. “Unless you could make a new Crystal Key. And to do that …”

“You’d have to keep the formula handy.”

Tyler looks doubtful. “But writing it in a book … ? You could lose a book.”

“Yeah, it would make more sense to, like, tattoo it on your body.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.