Work Text:
Pebbles on my palm None of the characters are mine, but of the Impossible Pictures
Even when I was married to Nick, even during the first few years, when we were so intimate with each other, I have never told him, that my most favourite pastime was to sit at the shore of the pond that lay near my family’s summer house, and throw pebbles at it. You know, pebbles – the rather monotonous grey mass of small stones that lined the shores of lakes, ponds and rivers when we were younger – ten or twenty years younger? Yes, I am talking about those pebbles.
Now, though, I am older, now, though, I am wiser, but still, still, throwing pebbles at the water and watch them skip over the surface before they sink without a trace is my favourite pastime yet. I may not be using the pond near my family’s summer house – they haven’t been there in years since I been gone – but rather the Pacific ocean over 4 million years in the past, from what will one day become the country of Peru – but right now, millennia before the first humans ever thought of leaving Africa, it is the edge of the world as I see it – and I like what I see.
Back to pebbles. Admittedly, skipping stones isn’t the most intellectual of pastimes, especially if the player has a doctorate in anthropology, but it is no dumber than dominoes or gin rummy, so found by my former mother-in-law, the original Mrs. Cutter, the original conservative piece of Scottish bedrock. Or is it not so former? My divorce with Nick was never finalized, he considered himself a widower – someone he is definitely not – so if Jenny Lewis intends to build a family with him, she’s in for a tough time...or maybe I’ll throw them a curveball and finalize my divorce with Nick anyways.
But as for pebbles, they – unlike Nick’s folks – have different personalities between themselves; you just need to take a good look at them. One maybe roundish in shape and semitransparent in colour, but in the middle of this entire semi-transparency is a drop of red, similar to old blood.
Another may be black, as black as shoe polish, but this blackness is merely a background to some yellow design, similar to, say, a palm tree.
Or the pebble might be uniform grey indeed, but in shape a perfect match to a lady’s slipper.
Or it might be green in colour and have a design of a white flying seagull “engraved” on it.
In other words, if you look close enough, you can find many different and exotic-looking pebbles on the shore. In my case, once there were enough, I would put them into my bathing cap – that mother of mine was always so particular about me getting water in my ears – or into a shoe, or even a newspaper bag. Once I filled my container, I would take them all home, to our flat in London, where I would go to school and to university, fall in love with Nick and the theme of anthropology, marry Nick and get a doctorate – in a vaguely similar sequence of events.
And where I would find my first time anomaly, and through it – my destiny. Oh, I could have stayed with Nick and eventually divorce him and possibly marry Stephen but at that time, well, all I had was Nick and our family hearth, and it had grown cold indeed. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so pliant to his and his family’s wishes; maybe I should have been more self-assured, more aggressive. But...for a while I truly loved Nick, for a while this pliancy seemed to be the right way, and as for self-assurance...I was never the most beautiful of women. Unlike my namesake, my face could never have launched a thousand ships and burned Troy to the ground, unlike Jenny Lewis I was not the kind of girl to constantly parade in high heels, disregarding common sense. Instead, I am the kind of a girl to have seen things that Nick could never hope to see, the dinosaur fanatic that he is. And now – now I am skipping one kind of pebble off the coast of prehistoric Peru, and planning to do something completely different to a completely different kind of pebble entirely.
You see, once I brought all these pebbles back to the flat, their tribulations weren’t over. It’s a hard life, having five people live in three bedrooms, with precious little space besides them. Consequently, I didn’t have too much of personal space to spend on my pebbles, and had to choose, which to keep, and which to throw away. (I usually managed to keep three pebbles out of every ten I brought home, so I loathe to complain too much). And this brings me to my next point: humans, for all their posturing, are very much like pebbles.
Well, actually, humans are more like the Homo erectus, if you want to go literal. We may be sapient, they are just erect, but physically – including the faces and the more practical-literal turn of mind – they are much more like us than their predecessors, the australopithecines and paranthropi. But I am talking in a more metaphoric-philosophical vein...unless it’s about my mother-in-law. The woman had a face like an ape and a personality like a rock...and sadly Nick seems to have gained something of her personality with the passing of time.
Anyways, my dear mother-in-law aside, humans are so much like pebbles, metaphorically speaking. A grey, cold, unknown mass until you take pains to try to learn or observe more closely them, in which case their personalities become as obviously different to you as their appearances are. And if you – conversely – keep your distance from them, and if you – perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not – have a bellyful of such feelings as aggravation, irritation and possibly even anger – then you can very easily fall into habit of treating them like pebbles in your palm, instead. And once you decide upon that, it’s easy to go to stage 3 – playing with the pebbles as if they were chess or checkers pieces.
Now then, what kind of pebbles do I have in my palm? This one, big, grey, massive, almost oversized for the pebble is Nick. Nick dearest is like that in character, if not in body – big, solid, reliable, and absolutely uncompromising as he had shown to me. True, lately he has shown than he can be sneaky, when he got me to turn on Leek, but that is just details. Nick is like a rock, like an avalanche of stone – very slow to get moving, but once the motion is on, nothing shall stop it, not even modern technology.
I have access to futuristic technology, of course, and in time it will be used to stop Nick’s advancement to the truth. Maybe I will be the one to use it, but if I can help it, Nick will have to do it himself. I shall start his avalanche – maybe I have already started it – but he will have to learn to finish it himself. Knowing his stolid, conservative, very reluctant to change nature, it’ll be quite painful to watch. After the death of Stephen, I shall enjoy it.
This one, resembling an oyster’s shell, shall be Jenny. Dear Miss Lewis, so hard on the outside, but soft and empty inside, a public relations specialist. A public relations specialist is the one called-upon by the government to persuade the public that a trolley is riding on its rails, hale and hearty, while in reality, the damn machine is hopelessly rusting in a ditch. A public relations specialist must turn garbage into sweet placebo pills and keep on smiling. But now Miss Lewis wants something else. She wants substance of her own, and she suspects that Nick is the one to give it to her. Well, you can rest easily, Miss Jenny Lewis, that you will get your substance all right, more than you can dream about, and that I will be right in the background, to see your further metamorphoses. I brought you out of Claudia Brown, I can put you back into her – or just transfer you to someplace else...like Germany in 1930s, where your British English will be so appropriate!
These two, roughly the size of cherry stones – Nick’s little helpers, Abby Maitland and Connor Temple. Following the wake of Nick and Jenny Lewis, they subconsciously plan to follow their lead. And since Jenny follows Nick and Nick is following my lead, they will too end up in the place of my choosing, in the palm of my hand, skipping along the waves.
And finally, Mr. James Lester, the sun-baked bureaucrat. This stretched-out piece of rock is so like his long nose, yes! A bureaucrat that can withstand the test of time and Leek and emerge unscathed. In time, he’ll too be skipping merrily along the waves, poor little pebble, until he’ll finally sink. The world will have one less bureaucrat to pollute it, and therefore – a better place.
And finally this – not a pebble, but a big black boulder, the one I am putting my pebbles on. It is the future – our future, the future of our world, the world of human race. In time, we will destroy it, leaving it for new species to develop sentience and to treat our descendants as mere beasts, which is almost what our descendants will become – but not if I can help.
Humans, after all, are not pebbles. They have intelligence and they have imagination. They have free will and determination. They have big brains and dexterous hands, and they know how to use them. Those who don’t, become extinct joined on later by those who do. But it matters not. I am a human, and so’s Nick and his crew, and Nick’s fight isn’t with any of the primeval beasts of the future or past. His fight is with time itself – and with me, because I am not through with him yet. He will skip once I throw him, the pebble-sized piece of Scottish bedrock once I throw him in the right direction, in the right way. He will skip and fulfil my plans and he will die, just like Stephen had died.
I am Helen Cutter. I may not be smarter than Nick, but I have an advantage – eight extra years of experience, and I will not hesitate to use them. I once wanted to be your ally, your partner, but now I will use you, like you have used me back then. You want a fair fight? I give you a fair fight, for you will not realize just how unfair it is.
I am Helen Cutter. I have changed greatly since I’ve stepped through the time anomaly and have seen the future of the human race and swore to alter it for the good. And I will do it. Nick Cutter – your time have come! You and the little Miss Lewis are nothing but pebbles in my palm, for I know everything, and you know nothing.
My little pebbles – prepare to skip and sink!