Arid Night

by Jaya Mitai

Slap.

The mosquitos weren't quite as bad this year, he reflected, trying to keep the bugs off him and rip up the offending weed at the same time, without smearing dirt all over his neck. It was clayish dirt, thick and nicely baked despite the rain two days ago, and the weed in question was crabgrass. Granted, half their yard was crabgrass, but it didn't belong in the garden.

And it was going to leave.

It was being particularly stubborn, as well, the roots digging deep and refusing to be pulled up by something as silly as a man. Straining harder only severed the stem, leaving the roots inground to sprout once more.

“Damn!”

He leaned up and scratched the offending itch with the back of his hand, getting sweat and dirt instead of just dirt on his neck but satisfying the itch. It would come back – had been every three or so minutes, like that irritating thirst. The sun was hot, beating down on his back mercilessly, and it was great. The first sun he'd gotten in a while, and he wasn't going to take a break until this section of the garden was weeded and cleaned out.

If he stopped now, he'd sit down with a glass of iced tea, and watch the condensation drip off the glass to the ground. Tense muscles would start to relax, his body would feel comfortable, and soon he'd be completely unable to rise. Considering it had rained every weekend for the past month, he couldn't afford to take two hours off now. He would get a drink when this half of the garden was cleared, and not before. Period.

You'd think he could have found a way to apply his powers to weeds without risk of killing the worms, he thought wryly, grabbing the pitchfork, stuck in the lawn a few feet back. Jean could do it telekinetically, but while that was easier effort-wise, it took a ridiculous amount of concentration, which made it applicable for a training session now and then, but a little impractical for every-week application. He threw the pitchfork into the ground and hopped on the tines, sinking them deep into the ground, before hopping off and leaning forward, forcing the earth to loosen, to give him more freedom to work with.

#Mmm . . . looks good from back here.# That voice also tempted him to take a break of another kind, but he just cast a look over his shoulder at the redhead admiring the view. He was in work jean shorts and no shirt, hoping for a tan, and her appreciative leer was . . . reassuring. That she would still be checking him out, after all these years.

*Not so bad yourself. How do you find shorts that short? * It was a particular talent of women in general, and however strange, wasn't a mutant ability, he'd decided. Had to be a genetic ability. Something to do with chromosomes and what part of the country you grew up in.

Being a cheerleader most likely had honed it.

He turned back to the job at hand, loosening the soil in a three foot square around him before dropping carefully to his knees in the dirt. Seven separate pops told him a least half that many joints were protesting. He was getting too old to take care of a garden this size. Too many responsibilities, too many things that took up too much time . . . when had the world started moving so fast? He'd sent email to California and gotten a reply in twenty minutes or less. Only a phone call could have been faster, and even so, he'd been fidgeting.

What a world, when email wasn't fast enough.

He shook sweat from his brow and tilted his head to the right irritably, trying to relieve that itch. So many things to make life eaiser. A Blackbird that never got them there fast enough. Email and AIM and ICQ and internet relay chat. Computer chips in cars to measure the gas/air mixture. So many tiny pieces that could go wrong, so long to find the problem.

How did these things make life easier?

The tomato plants waved to him in silent greeting as a welcome, cool breeze washed over them. Tomato plants took the world at the same slow pace for hundreds of years. Billions of farmers had done what he was doing, pulling up weeds one at a time, slowly, but completely, and revelling in the satisfaction of a job well done, and done completely. That sense of self-worth . . . where had it gone, in a world of instant gratification?

#Scott, you're thinking too hard. Weed the bed so we can go in. And you're getting a nice sunburn.#

Sunburn, tan, what's a little skin damage among friends?

The itch still bothered him, and in irritation he scratched at it more roughly – and opened his eyes.

Another shift. He was leaning against a tree, now, instead of the rocks. Grass was beneath him, soft and cool, and a little breeze was playing over them both. He barely had the strength to do it, but Scott Summers turned his head, just slightly, to the right. The breeze had picked up her dull red hair and it was tickling his neck, tickling her face, tickling over cracked and sand-dried lips. Her skin was the tone of the rocks, now, out of place in the green meadows, and her stillness equally strange.

His eyes travelled slowly, so slowly back to the center of their sockets, and took in the sparkling expanse of clear blue lake, down in the gently sloping valley. A few hundred yards.

Yards. The thought came back to him, nagging, and he closed his eyes. No. He couldn't take a break, not till he finished weeding the garden.

Large, shining eyes watched the couple from the other side of the valley. He was faintly surprised the shift had stretched far enough to encompass him, as well. He hadn't met a shift that had managed to kill him, nor had he met one he had any control over. But having observed them for all this time, he was beginning to notice the pattern, finally.

And a pattern indicated Order, in the midst of Chaos. The order of the universe, imposed by the universe, over all but this tiny fraction of it, nothing more than the unraveling of a sock, near the big toe. Hardly noticeable to the giant that was creation, but earth-shattering to the toe that sock had once protected.

Earth-shattering was particularly applicable, here.

It was his mind, more powerful than his eyes, these days, that watched the two, nearly a mile away. One mind was still functional; delusional, due to massive exposure and dehydration, but functioning. The brain was intact enough to propel the body to water.

The mind, however . . .

It would take nothing. It would take nothing but a voice, not even telepathy, to urge the man to his feet, to life-giving water. To save his life. It would take only a hand, stretched out, to help him there. It would take no more effort than that of a small child, even a weak one.

It was more than he could offer.

The other mind was nothing, an empty space where there had once been one that drank in experiences with an equal amount of joy and fear, of pleasure and pain. There had been a life there, a vibrant life that he had enjoyed watching. There was nothing there now. The previous shift had done its work well, and she had succumbed to the wastelands that still covered her.

The residual radiation of that wasteland had weakened them both significantly, and the man would undoubtedly suffer for it, if he survived the next few days. His hallucinations were pleasant enough, even if they reflected his current discomforts. Perhaps it was better. The less painful of two deaths.

The slight man sighed, and rose. It didn't matter, the radiation; he'd shielded himself from it quiet effectively. He'd yet to be thrown into a shift that would kill him, despite any number of close calls. He could survive nearly everything, so long as there was air to breathe . . . and he'd seen enough shifts to know that wasn't necessarily a constant in this constantly changing world he watched.

As he made his way towards the lake, well in view of the couple he was aware could not detect his presence, he contemplated further. The shifts seemed to be moving with more purpose, these days. There were so few Scott Summers left, so few . . . it was ridiculous, that the patterns seemed to reflect it, but nonetheless it was true. He'd lost his ability to see every timestream, every possibility. They were all one, now, and once he'd gotten over the initial shock, he'd merely reaccepted his job as observer, and witness.

And he witnessed.

The shifts were being selective, showing him only certain things, but his powers were not completely negated by the damage that had been done the timestream. He could still see every possibility – they was only one possibility. No more selecting a dimension to watch. No more knowing there were infinite possibilities. There weren't. He could see those that would guarantee Earth's survival diminishing at a speed that made his heart sick. He didn't wish to return to his own home, bearing only the news that the world he watched and cared for and loved had been completely cleansed of those that had made it such a joy to observe.

There was a pattern, and there were enough that believed in it. But finding that pattern would require the help of the man that was dying even as he stooped to take some water into a flask, to test it for poisons or other traps the shifts placed in even the most innocent-looking of environments.

This water was pure, completely untouched by pollutants, and he drank deeply of the sweet stuff.

He didn't require the food or water. At least, he hadn't before the shifts had started. He'd been sustained on his own form of energy. The moon was lost to him now, caught up in the shifting, and it was a much less gracious place to be. In one reality, the moon had crashed into the earth after a battle involving Galactus and Magneto, which was how he'd arrived on Earth in the first place, but the shifts did not wish him to return there.

The shifts did not wish it. That wasn't part of the pattern he saw, but it was something his instincts told him was correct. The shifts wanted a witness, a historian. They catered to him, giving him just what he needed to survive. His complete lack of control was another disturbing characteristic that warned him more strongly than anything else that there was something more going on, something that he simply couldn't see.

Something that was more powerful than he was. Something that was powerful enough to have effect on a temporal disaster such as none of his race had yet witnessed. And if it had effect, the potential damage or good to be done was simply staggering.

And he needed to keep his eyes open, and watch, and witness it.

And learn it.

And not help the man only three hundred yards away. Scott Summers' breathing was getting more labored by the minute, dehydration finally settling in for the long haul. He would die sometime tomorrow, and Uatu detected no mind within fifty miles, nor any oncoming shifts. Nature would run its course, and he would die. And like he'd promised, he would simply record the man's death throes, at his feet, and offer no assistance of any kind.

Not because he was a Watcher. And not because he had been ordered, numerous times, to stop aiding the humans of Earth.

Because he knew what his aid would bring. More pain and suffering for a man that he could no longer save. He couldn't save either one in the wastelands, and he couldn't save them now.

It wasn't a tear that fell in the lake. It wasn't a tear that caused the outward rippling that distorted his reflection in that clear water.

It wasn't a tear that made him wonder, with a heavy heart, what might have happened if he had interfered in the beginning, before the shifting had even started.

He already knew.

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