Spark

They were coming closer every day and anticipation had built in her veins like charge. She knew the results would come and she would feel the buzz of notification but she kept checking the screen regardless, as though she would miss it, somehow.

She supposed she was losing her mind a little bit. Waiting. It was the waiting that did it. All her life now; waiting, waiting, waiting. It was odd, to feel echoes from her future self bearing back through time to the present – knowing what would happen and feeling the effects as though it were so incredibly awful it reverberated like a shockwave back, forward, sideways, always.

Silver flashed in the moonlight as she slipped the key into the lock and stepped in. A strange choice of meeting place, but a strange meeting.

The city was closed, it was long past five. Darkness permeated the streets, whispering along in shadows that coalesced into clusters of chiaroscuro moments, hovering around in the emptiness, glinting off the shop windows. She had a key to the place curtesy of the night security guard who had allowed her this one favour. He remembered how it felt back then – the waiting. The last night before they would know, one way or the other. Tomorrow they would all be transformed; moved from the earthly state of waiting into the transcended state of accepted. Or rejected. Depending on how the message read. A burial or an ascendance.

Tamworth's Powerstation Museum was heavy with metals and plastics in the darkness of the night, and switching on the dim orange light seemed an interactive part of the exhibit for the little light it provided. She looked around the cluttered space, each appliance labelled with the year it belonged to – a treasure cave of lives gone by. Waiting for her old friend, patiently, half expecting to spend the night alone anyway. It had been hastily arranged, and they had not spoken for a long while. She thought about that as she reached out to almost touch an old telephone with a rotary dial. Atrociously minty green. How long had it been since its wires heard any voices?

The building creaked, and the items rustled back in turn. She wouldn't come anyway. Stupid idea. They were hardly even friends now.

Her phoned buzzed apologetically, not wanting to offend the rotary she still stood before. That would be it then. Her results. Only a number on a phone screen – but a powerful dictator.

"I think I just got mine too," a soft voice whispered from behind her, familiar like a dream remembered just slightly. She took a deep breath before turning, and briefly imagined a plane full of terrified passengers adopting the brace position prior to an explosive crash.

Boom.

Leah had grown taller, more beautiful since they last met in the flesh. How many years ago now? Her eyes were orbs in the dim light, not noticing the relics jumbled on the shelves, only seeing the memory before her.

They stuck there, time broken, for a moment. Breathing in the old dust of smell that all antiques have. Looking. Remembering. Waiting.

Leah pointed to her pocket, indicating what she meant. Zoe nodded. She had to say something. It was her turn to speak. Voices crackling into old wires, zinging them to life again.

"What do you need?" she asked softly. Of course she didn't know. It had been too long.

"Ninety-seven."

Shining hell. Leah must have been more nervous than her, more tightly wound. An Everest of a goal.

"You?" Leah asked, gesturing to her opposite's pocket, where surely her phone hid.

"Ninety," Zoe whispered, the word echoed around her, bouncing off the irons and light bulbs and old phones and appliances. Ninety...ninety...ninety.

Leah finally broke eye contact and wandered around the room a bit, looking at the artifacts. She reached out and touched some, despite the large 'DO NOT TOUCH' sign. Zoe had to shake her head – she quite understood what that was like. Forbidden. Unwanted even; frustrated. Touched. Loved.

"Do you think any of them were like us?" Leah asked, more to the yellowed sconce before her than to Zoe, the milky glass containing a bulb that had not been alight in over a century. "The people that had these in their homes. Were any of them-"

And she stopped, because it didn't matter. Not really. Of course some of them were.

"I'm going to look," Zoe said. Leah nodded.

They both pulled out their phones, absurdly modern in context, and forced their eyes to the messages there – refusing to wait – ignoring the pounding of nerves in their ears.

Smiles erupted on their faces. Big, stupid smiles, of relief and years of effort and hope. And Zoe knew the weight off her shoulders was so heavy as it cracked into the universe that her past self could feel it, five minutes ago she could feel that weight exploding like nuclear.

Their breath returned eventually, excitement settled. Comfortable.

"Maybe I can get your number?" Leah asked, biting her lip slightly. "We should – well. We should be in contact. You know? We've been through so much and..."

Zoe's eyes travelled back to the rotary phone, and the same question floated back. A room of echoes. And breaths. Everything around her collected thoughts, whispers, secrets. Do you think any of them were like us?

And she walked forward to her past.