Quantum Night by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online

what?”
    “Do you remember 2001?”
    “Sure. Saw it in a theater when it first came out.”
    “Not the movie,” I said. “The year.”
    “Oh.” He made a how-could-I-forget-it gesture at his face. “Yes.”
    “Jean Chrétien was prime minister then, right? And George W. Bush was sworn in as president.”
    “Umm, yeah. That’s right.”
    “And what were the biggest news stories of 2001?”
    “Well, 9/11, obviously. Beyond that, off the top of my head, I don’t remember.”
    “But you
would,”
I said.
    “What?”
    “You would remember others if you gave it some thought, right?”
    “I guess.”
    “I don’t,” I said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The D.A. surprised me with an article about my grandfather from the
Winnipeg Free Press.
I went to the DaFoe Library this morning, and they pulled the microfilm of that edition. I started looking at other headlines from that day, but none of them stirred any memories, and neither did the front pages of the
Free Press
from other days around then. So I went online and looked at the covers of
Time
and
Maclean’s
from 2001. I didn’t recognize any of the stories until the summer. Two thousand, no problem. The second half of 2001, yeah, it all came back to me. But the initial six months of 2001 are a blank. The first thing I can pin down from that year is the day after Canada Day. July first fell on a Sunday that year, so people got July second off work. I remembered being pissed that I’d tried to go tothe post office on that Monday to pick up a parcel, only to find it closed for the holiday.” I spread my arms. “I’ve lost half a year of my life.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “As far as I can tell, yes. I mean, I remember being disgusted when the US Supreme Court handed down the decision in
Bush v. Gore
—but that was in December of 2000. I don’t remember Bush’s actual inauguration although there
had
to have been protests, right?”
    “I imagine so.”
    “And in June of that year, Carroll O’Connor passed away—Archie Bunker himself! You know how much I love
All in the Family.
I simply
couldn’t
have missed that bit of news, but somehow I did. Until today, I’d always assumed he was still alive in retirement somewhere.”
    “And you just realized you had this gap?”
    “Well, it was nineteen years ago, right? How often do we think about stuff from that far back? I do remember 9/11. I remember being right here, on campus, when I heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center; I’d just started my third year. But other things from that long ago? How often would they come up?”
    Menno shifted his bulky form in his chair. “Any idea why you can’t remember those six months?”
    “Yes,” I said, but then fell silent. Menno had known me back then, but I’d never told him about this.
    “And?” he prompted, reaching down to stroke Pax’s head.
    I took a deep breath, then: “I died when I was nineteen. Legally dead. Heart stopped, breathing stopped. The whole nine yards.”
    Menno halted in mid-stroke. “Really?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?” he asked, leaning back again.
    I pulled my chair closer to his desk. “I’d gone back home to Calgary for the Christmas break. My sister was off in Europe, and my parents were on a cruise—but I wanted to see my friends. I remember New Year’s Eve, of course. Yes, the whole world had celebrated big-time a year before, on December thirty-first, 1999, but you know me: I held out for the
real
beginning of the twenty-first century, which was January first, 2001, right? Not 2000.”
    “Because there was no year zero,” supplied Menno.
    “Exactly! Anyway, I’d attended a party at the house of one of my high-school friends, and that night—that is, like 2:00 A.M. on the morning of January first, 2001—when I was heading home, I was attacked by a guy with a knife. It was a cold, clear night. I remember the stars: Orion standing tall, Betelgeuse like a drop of blood, Jupiter and Saturn near the