FILTERS 10

THE FATHER

It begins to rain.

Two cameras snap from their brackets and land softly in shrubs. He runs out of his dorm, leaping landing to landing, and in few strides pushes through the back door of the building, to the quiet corner of the lot. The thicket is empty, a pair of figures move quickly on the far side, fleeing the weather.

He runs into the trees. He opens his bag and strips. The black jumpsuit is first, then black boots. Black mask, black goggles, white rain jacket. Watch-altimeter, compass. Inhale. The thicket falls away in a blink, the university rushing to fill the space, then the city, shrouded in heavy rain. He sees lightning and hears thunder.

He looks at his hands, at the gloves that cover them. He watches the downpour fall on open palms. The water doesn't stick or streak, it bounces off, some back into the air, some rebounding onto his arms or his chest before returning to the air. He looks at the city. The sight is beautiful and strange, for his map was made in darkness, and this territory is in daylight, though rain-and-cloud obscured. He looks to the stadium, then to the streets around the campus. To cars, crawling on, headlights just visible.

His memory adjusts, implicit recognition returning. He looks at the clouds that run to the south and west. He thinks about the storm that surrounds him, yet cannot touch him. He feels an odd, reaching gratitude, and then his purpose snaps him from his saunter and he moves.

West to the coast, the rain continues. He is stricken by the deep blue of the ocean, but he doesn't linger. South along the coast, the rain continues. Sea starboard, port hazy and green. He can just see the little foaming wakes of boats as they move, some toward land, to dock. He knows barrier islands lie ahead of the sound, and when he can finally see them he sweeps into the gulf. He knows the geography well enough to reach Tampa without assistance, but the sense of pressure gives him perfect bearing, and it grows as he approaches.

Soon he hears a second storm, the tempest and the tides.

The rain continues.

When he is ahead of the bay, positioned as though his origin could be Cuba, he turns to face the pressure and begins his descent. He looks beyond the rain and the waters. Beyond forested neighborhoods, between towers, to the sphere. To the root. He finds a figure, black and untouchable. First question answered.

He passes above the Skyway and slows. There are boats in the bay, and he might be low enough to see the individual occupants were they not sheltering under covered decks or within the craft.

The rain continues.

Where the rings in Germany and Mexico cut through closely set buildings and narrow streets, most of this ring has cut through suburbs. The worst he sees are fallen roofs, one on a large supermarket. He sees people reaching the barrier and disrobing and passing through. He feels amazement as he sees some passing through from the other side, toward the sphere.

He looks at where the barrier must lie and focuses on its presence in the field. His vision wavers and blurs and as he blinks quickly he begins to physically see the barrier, an intuitive apprehension of the space it occupies.

He thinks. He thinks.

Can he project barriers? He can, and he does, conjuring a small circle ahead of himself that like the barrier is invisible yet perceptible. He has destroyed objects with his gift, and the sphere of debris does the same, while this barrier seems impregnable. Can he surround objects with this unyielding force? He can, and he does. He looks to the split roof, taking the half outside the barrier and drawing it to himself. He halves it again and gives one half this quality, and as he pushes the pieces together, only the piece without buckles.

On a whim he pushes both into the barrier, and both pass without issue. Considering this meaningful, he takes the section of the roof within the sphere, and moves all back and forth through the barrier. Then he crushes them into a ball he sets beside parked cars.

He looks again at the center. The sphere has touched ground, it now drags chunks of concrete and earth into the air. He takes them, one by one, forcing them into a separate sphere.

No change in the sphere; no shift in the figure; no resistance. Second question answered.

He passes through the barrier. The rain stops.

He hears something else: the destruction of the churning sphere, still miles away.

He moves forward, over neighborhoods and businesses, over a university campus, across a river and past towers that still stand. He finds figures in stairwells and in garages, running to their cars. Some stand without moving, in the high floors, watching the sphere.

Some are watching him.

It is great and it is terrible. The surface like water, chunks of metal and rock slowing the current in places but still moving with it. His skin is protected, and he was able to pass through the barrier without issue. Is what envelopes him like the barrier? Will it protect him?

He looks across the surface and finds a rock and frees it. He carves a slab from it and sends it back, imbuing it with the quality and facing it to the incoming debris, holding it there for several seconds and watching as debris hits it and that part of the current slows before flowing around it. Then he draws the slab back, the surface still clean, free of any marks. He moves close enough to the sphere to touch it, his open hand, palm down, inching toward it. His hand is angled and his ring finger just touches the surface–and there it remains, small pieces sometimes catching on it before being pushed forward. He pushes his hand farther in and feels nothing, not even the movement of debris. He pushes his arm in, then both, then enters the sphere completely.

He sees her.

In the air, mouth agape, arms loose at her sides. No clothing, no hair.

Andrew frowns. No fingernails.

Third question answered.

Something was wrong from the start. She never had what he has, and that inadequacy set her on the path to this destruction. It wasn't that she went too far, it wasn't that she needed more time. She might have lived her entire life without issue, but something broke her.

He has this power. His is greater.

"Caught in a wave," he says softly.

His mind spreads to the barrier and he dismisses her grasp. The barrier disappears and the sphere halts and he takes it, allowing it to fall gently into the streets. Then he flies to the woman.

"Hello?" he asks.

She does not respond.

"Do you need help?" he asks, moving closer.

She does not respond.

He touches her shoulder, and suddenly he hears nothing but crashing tides and thunder, and sees nothing but her. She is no longer in the air, she stands in an ocean, the waters just below her knees. She lifts one hand, offering to him, and he takes it. She seems like she wants to say something, but her mouth does not move, and she makes no sound. With sudden understanding, he places his hand on her head.

His eyes open and he returns to the world. Tears fall from her closed eyes and stream down her cheeks, and in an instant she falls as dust to nothing.

This too, he understands.

He does not need to move debris when he can turn it to dust, dust he captures within a sphere of his own. Plaster and metal and concrete are wiped away, and he carries bodies to a park as they emerge.

He finds another woman, dazed, mumbling. Her face is bloodied and swollen and her knees and calves are twisted. She sputters and groans and continues to mumble and he holds a hand out and says "It's okay, I'm here to help you," and carefully takes her in his arms. As he descends again to the park he feels her heartbeat, and as she trembles, her fear. She looks at him, arms in torn sleeves tight to her chest, and she asks "What are you?" and falls unconscious.

He does not realize how swiftly he has worked.

He compresses his sphere until he feels something change within and it becomes solid, and he sets it in the park, where a crowd has gathered, and upon seeing them, his self finally returns.

They watch. Waving, cheering.

Andrew raises a hand back in greeting, and then he hears the aircraft.

One near him, a helicopter. News, two passengers, camera mounted to the front.

One far above him. Military, empty metal, a drone.

Mexico after.

He's gone, over the ocean.

He passes the keys and what he knows as Havana, he passes the narrow part of Cuba and the Isla de La Juventud, then moves toward the Yucatan. He follows the coastline back into the gulf until it shifts north and he breaks off into the interior. He flies above sprawling farmlands and vast forests and mountains when he reaches the valleys he knows that if he continues northwest he will reach Mexico City.

When the sun is directly overhead he arrives at the capital. He looks into the field, his mind spreading over the largest city he has ever seen, figures endless in every direction but one.

He sees the ring, and in its harrowing dunes he feels self-disgust.

There are roads in the sand, some beaten by traffic, some paved. He sees a facility he imagines must be for research, with elevated trailers, Mexican flags, and towers he thinks must be for drilling. He sees a quarry in the sand, with cranes and massive trucks, and he sees the beginnings of reconstruction. All are empty.

He sees a small platform set beneath a cross, close the edge of the ring. A lone figure sits before it.

He lands near the platform, where a road that was beyond the sphere meets sand. He looks at the buildings around him, most have been repaired, with new rooms and walls erected. He sees places that remain untouched, still bearing their scars from the sphere.

He looks at the platform, and he walks toward it.

He reaches it soon enough. He sees simple wooden chairs on either side of an aisle. He sees a single car that is old but looks well-maintained, the tires covered in sand. He sees tables full of candles and pictures, and he sees the man whose back is to him, who reads a book, who wears all black but for white collar.

The man has heard him, and he stands and closes his book and says "Hola," and as he sees Andrew, he says "ah. . . hello."

"Hablo un poco de español, señor."

"But would you be more comfortable in English?" asks the father.

"I didn't want to impose."

The man shakes his head, "You do not impose. I have seen you today, what you did, so please forgive my forwardness: why have you come here?"

He looks up, to the cross. "I don't know," and he walks up the aisle, past the man, to the table of pictures. So many.

The father asks "Are you looking for something?" Andrew looks back to him, to the book he carries. It is bound in dark leather that shows wear, but something about the pages makes Andrew think it may not be a Bible. The father takes his silence as answer, saying "You do know why."

Andrew weakly shrugs. He turns back to the tables, and his eyes fall on a picture of a woman who reminds him of Emilia. "Regret. Regret I didn't stop this."

"Regret. Did you come here to apologize? Do you feel this burden is yours?" asks the father.

Andrew's thoughts are still on Emilia. "Whose else would it be?"

"Are there others like you?" he asks.

Andrew says "I don't know. I've always believed there are."

"Yet you are the only to have intervened."

Andrew looks again at the man. "Why did you assume I speak English?"

"Because the first of these to be stopped was in America, and when you spoke Spanish your accent sounded American. It is a quite American belief that the weight of souls who here departed should fall on your shoulders."

Andrew looks away, into the ring, where he sees sand catch in the wind and blow from the tops of the dunes. "I could have stopped this and I didn't. Who else could say that?"

The man's gaze follows his, then he looks back. "Who is to say that you should? Who is to say that these events are not justice for the inequities of man?"

Andrew is taken aback, "How could you believe that?"

The man says "Why do you assume that I do? And why do you esteem yourself as the necessary savior?"

"I don't! But if I'm the only one who can stop these, shouldn't I?"

The wind rises, sand billows from the dunes, approaching them. Andrew raises a shield.

"Then why didn't you?" asks the father.

"Because I didn't know I could!"

The father points at him. "So now that you do, will you bind yourself? Will you make an oath to stop these forevermore?"

"Shouldn't I?"

The father turns his head, "I can hear your doubt."

"I don't know if I could reach all of them in time."

He nods, "And you feel guilt because you worry that even if you could, you might not want to."

"I have a life beyond this. People would notice if I disappeared every time a sphere hit."

"What, then? You intervene when you feel like it, and reassure yourself with your guilt when you don't?" and now the father speaks slowly, "No se revuelque en su culpa, es orgullo disfrazado de autodesprecio." Your guilt is disguised pride.

Andrew crosses his arms. "I don't know."

The father sits down. "You have a choice. It needs not be made today, but the day will come."

Andrew is far above the ring.

He looks back to the platform, but he finds no figure there.

It's late.

Up the stairs, through the mudroom, past the kitchen. His father is at his desk, his mother is sleeping. His brother is in his bedroom, phone in hand, television warm. He sees his father getting up and walking to the door and he's about to reach for the handle when it opens ahead of him. "Dad–!" interrupted as his father embraces him.