Years Like Rain

"What happened next," Elias told the room, with Jonas's apartment gone silent around him, "began with the lever answering half a second too late."

The lever kicked under Elias's hand and then answered half a second too late.

That delay was enough to turn the world outside the machine into weather.

He sat strapped into the cradle at the core of the full-scale rig, jaw locked so hard it hurt, both hands moving over the control arc again and again as the chamber shook around him. The torn knuckle on his hand protested every reach, leaving a tacky smear on the controls when his grip slipped. Brass and ceramic housings blurred at the edge of his sight. The field rails gave off a thin blue shine that stuttered with each spike. Beyond the open framework of the machine, the lower lab did not stay a lab for more than a blink. Light swung across it in wild bands. Dark. Morning. Dark again. Dust lifted, settled, vanished. Shadows of workers, if there were workers, smeared into nothing. The concrete walls seemed to breathe, old stains fading, new panels skinning over them, old panels stripped away again. Years were no longer passing. They were slamming past in stacked sheets.