John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy) - By Michael Kayatta

Chapter 1

It was the sort of glare that would have bothered most people, shimmering and flickering against the afternoon sun as clouds moved past, refusing to let anyone forget that it was there. For John, it made him curious, as most things did, but it was almost two o’clock, and his mother had said to be ready by then. Still, something was out there in the sand causing the light, and if he didn’t investigate it, who would?

The teen ran across the beach behind his house to the water’s edge and crouched down above the light he’d followed, positioning his back to break its line to the sun. The gleam cooled at his shadow, finally allowing him sight of his discovery: a half-buried, metal-rimmed circle of glass edging shyly above the flattened sand below him.

John tilted his head to the side and saw numbers engraved on the glass along its curve. A small metal arrow was nearing a carefully etched nine from underneath. He’d found a wristwatch. John lifted it from the sand and shook it clean within the ocean before bringing it to his ear. It was still ticking.

Dangling the watch by its leather band, John looked through the glass and noticed something odd. Seated behind the hands was a network of crisscrossed wires, each hair-thin and pulled taut against the frame. They nested so tangled and thick that nothing but more wires could be seen beneath their top layer. He wondered what possible purpose they could serve so simple a machine.

John placed the watch on his wrist. As the metal touched skin, he felt an instantaneous jolt, as if two magnets had been suddenly joined together. The skin of his left arm prickled, and the small hairs that lived there raised straight.

His arm jerked back sharply from the shock, and to his surprise, even though he’d yet to latch its band, the watch didn’t fall. John quickly spun his wrist upside-down. Both halves of its band dangled down as expected, but the metal base remained stubbornly in place against his skin.

Confused, he shot his fingers around its face and pulled. For more then a minute he tugged and yanked, strained and jerked, but as hard as he tried, the watch sat firm against his wrist as if glued. Out of breath and exasperated, John finally let it go. He’d made no progress; the watch was stuck to him.

Suddenly, the boy noticed movement beneath the glass. The tiny metal threads nestled beneath the watch’s hands had come to life, intermittently vibrating at different intensities as the second-hand ticked past the numbers that circled it.

At first, the resonations seemed random, but the longer John watched the wires stir, the more he sensed an indefinable order behind their movement. The effect was bewitching.

“John!” His mother’s call broke the trance. “John, it’s two o’clock!”

John read the time from the watch; it agreed with his mother. Quickly, he latched the band beneath his wrist and ran through the sand back to his porch where his mother stood waiting and smiling. Embarrassed by his predicament, he hid his hand and the watch in his pocket as he approached.

“Are you ready?” his mother asked.

“I’m not sure how to be ready when I don’t know where we’re going,” he answered, unlatching the Velcro straps on his dripping sandals.

“What’s that on your wrist?” she asked, eyeing the watch he’d just exposed.

“It’s nothing,” John replied hastily, kicking the sandals from his feet. “Just something I found on the beach.” He moved swiftly past his mother and walked through the wide sliding glass door behind her to her bedroom.

John lazily plopped down on the edge of her still-made bed, being careful to place his arms, and the watch now stuck to one of them, angled behind him. His mother stood for a moment looking out past the sand to the ocean before turning and joining him inside.

“Another late night?” he asked as she closed the glass shut behind her.

“It’s not so bad,” she said.

He watched his mother’s reflection as she checked what was left of her make-up in the mirror above the dresser. A once-white plastic nametag with her name written on it hung crookedly from the front of her shirt.

She unpinned it and turned around. “Come on, get your shoes. You shouldn’t be late today.”

John bounced from the bed and walked to the shallow closet outside his room where he found the worn, brown tennis shoes he’d left there the day before. As he crouched and laced them onto