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“I didn’t want to tell you,” she says. “Grandpa died.”

“Tell me,” I insist, and she does. “Ah. Well, I thought something must have happened. Not too long ago, I ended up in my old bedroom, and it belonged to a little girl. She was asleep, thank goodness. So I figured either Dad had moved, or—something. I’m glad he had you there with him, but I’m sorry you had to see him like that.”

The doors close, the train lurches, and then we are in motion, headed downtown again. The conductor passes through the car, sees Alba’s tears, and says, “You all right, child?”

“Yes, I’m fine. My grandfather died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” says the conductor, a sturdy, middle-aged woman whose hair is so stiff that I wonder if she’s wearing a wig. She notices that Alba is wearing only one lime-green mitten. “You know, I think I saw your other mitten at the lost and found back there at the Kimball terminal.” Then she seems to take in that I am coatless, that we are, probably, homeless.

“Thank you,” I say. “We’re on our way home. We’re just killing a little time before we show up, we don’t want to wake them.”

The conductor looks skeptical, but says, “All right, you just let me know if I can help you,” and disappears through the doors between this car and the next.

We watch the city flashing by, black buildings against a dark orange sky. No one gets on for a long time. The sky is beginning to lighten in the east. Alba sits next to the window, her feet near the heater, watching the sun rise. “Do you believe in Heaven?” Alba asks me.

We are about to pull into the Rockwell station. There are a few people waiting on the platform. I’m thinking about whether to admit to my child that I don’t believe there’s anything at all after we die—is that too terrible, to tell her that I think there’s just nothing? But I’m spared having to answer: I feel Alba’s clothing collapse into a pile on the seat beside me, hear her sharp intake of breath, and she’s gone. I take the coat she was wearing and exit the train. As I trudge down the platform, I see the conductor leaning out a window, staring at me, wondering, I’m sure, why I am alone. I think about my father, climbing that tree, so afraid and so determined, and I grieve him more, here on this random El platform on a random morning long before his death, than I ever knew I could.

The Parable of the Parrots

Sunday, August 18, 2013 (Oliver is 57)

Oliver: I’m in a photography studio, or at least that’s my best guess. I don’t know where I am in time, and this place is strange to me. It is a large room; perhaps it was once part of a factory. The air is too conditioned, so I’m shivering. The walls are rough brick and the floors are old wooden boards, but in the middle of the room a square section of the floor has been covered in a dull black material and encircled by metal tracks full of cameras and lights: it’s an antique VR recording rig. There’s one track on the floor and others level with my knees, waist, chest, head, several suspended above me in concentric rings that describe an orb of dead mechanical eyes. I count eight cameras on the biggest track. An odd thing is that the equipment is bright blue, not black or silver. A tall metal stool sits in the center of this space, all the cameras apparently aimed at it. Imposing stacks of dark, rectangular, blinking machines hum along one large wall, a bank of fans blowing air over them. I remember that this is what servers used to look like. There are rolls of paper suspended from the ceiling, white, gray and black; a green screen covers one wall, blackout blinds shade the windows. One of the blinds is slightly raised. I go to that window, and early morning light smites me. I must be on the second floor of this building. There are a few cars parked along the street, and I guess by these and the cameras that I’m in early twenty-first century America.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust again to the dim light of the room. A long plastic and metal collapsible table made to look like wood, two gray metal folding chairs, and an empty camera tripod stand near the camera rigs. The table is cluttered with things that aren’t useful to me right now: a scanner, a cheap spiral-bound notepad, a few black pens, hand lotion and a comb with extra-wide teeth, a coffee maker and those terrible plastic pods of coffee, two mugs, an orange. A woman’s blue cardigan hangs over the back of one of the chairs. Unfortunately it’s too small for me to wear.

There are two doors in the room. One is metal and has a peephole that shows me an empty cement-block hallway so stark it reminds me of a prison. The other leads to a WC, quite bare except for a toilet, a sink, soap and a roll of toilet paper. But wait: there’s a purple bath towel hanging from a hook on the back of the door, hurrah. I wrap it around my waist. I should get out of here, but nothing outside looks alluring, and I won’t get far wearing a towel. There’s no telephone here; if there were I’d try to call the Yellow House.

I flip through the notebook. It’s full of to-do lists, technical diagrams I can’t understand, notes that might have to do with teaching, doodles and numbers, small, neat cursive handwriting. Then I turn a page and see two columns of numbers. At the top of one column is Clare’s name; at the top of the other is Beck’s. They must have been playing Scrabble or some other game. It was close; Beck won. Now I know where I am: this is Beck’s old studio.

I sometimes wonder if I miss clues when I time travel. What if some of the random-seeming trips were meant to mean something? When I end up in the Yellow House I know why I’m there: there are pivots that my life turns on—I am there because part of me is always there. But often I don’t have prompts. I don’t know if I should stay in this room and wait for someone (Clare? Beck? Alba?) to arrive, or try to leave the building . . . ? It’s like a video game about indecision that has no obvious goal.

I roll the orange across the table, more forcefully than I meant to. It drops to the floor, then rolls toward the circle of cameras and stops before it enters the sphere. I retrieve it and roll it gently into the enclosed area. As soon as the orange is inside the sphere, light floods the circle and all the cameras focus on it soundlessly. The orange rolls past the stool and stops at the opposite rim of the circle. The cameras continue attending to it for a few moments, then their lenses retract and shut off. The effect is eerie.

So this is it, the point of no return. I try to remember what Beck told me, years ago now. Talk to Isadora. But I don’t see anyone who might be Isadora. What did Beck want me to tell her? Perhaps I should step inside the VR rig and record a message? But Beck didn’t tell me to do that.

“Isadora,” I say, “where are you?”

I hear a soft whirring noise behind me. I turn and see dim light flashing in a corner of the room. It’s on a tall, wheeled table under a black plastic bag. I pull it into the room, reluctantly lift the bag and get a fright: a mechanical head is waking.

It’s hideous. My fright subsides; instead I feel pity. I hope no one ever shows her a mirror. “Isadora?”

“Hello?” Her eye-lenses focus on me, look me up and down. “Who are you?” Her voice is mechanical, like the robot voices I hear all the time in the past, on telephones and trains and elevators, but I can tell that it is based on Beck’s voice. It’s pleasant but oddly frictionless.

“My name is Oliver Thornton-Yang. Some people know me as Yang Qing.”

“What is the password?” Isadora asks in a stern voice.

I have no idea. Why didn’t Beck tell me there was a password? Alba has mentioned more than once that Beck is a dragon about security, so I won’t try the dumb ones like guest and password. Perhaps friend? Mellon? No, any nerd would try those. Isadora suddenly makes a weird hiccuping sound. I jump and she makes it again: she’s laughing.

“You should see your face,” she says. “There’s no password, silly Oliver. I’m not afraid of you anyway.” Her voice has changed. She sounds warmer, more human, as though she were only impersonating a robot before.

“Maybe you should be,” I say. “You don’t know who I am.”

“You’re on the users list,” she says, as though I ought to know this.

“Am I? What’s the date today?”

“Sunday, August 18, 2013,” she says, sounding bored.