The Infinite Miles, page 1
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PRAISE FOR THE INFINITE MILES
“A wild and unforgettable ride through time and space that lures you in with nostalgia and sharply turns to unpredictable and unforgettable places. Hannah Fergesen’s debut is a cosmic achievement.”
—ADAM SILVERA, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END
“A reality-bending adventure through space, time, and a very particular kind of nostalgia, The Infinite Miles is both incredibly fun and incredibly poignant.”
—HANNAH WHITTEN, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FOR THE WOLF
“A clever, joyous, irresistible romp across time and space, full of characters you can’t help but root for. This book is for anyone who’s ever dreamed of the stars.”
—GRACE D. LI, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF PORTRAIT OF A THIEF
“The ensuing time-travel romp takes this unlikely pair from the modern day to 1970s New York City to far-flung alien planets, but Fergesen grounds their travels in fleshed-out interpersonal dynamics and lovely explorations of friendship, anger, and remorse…Readers will be swept away by this rollicking adventure.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)
“Fergesen’s debut will appeal to fans of Doctor Who who enjoy a little nostalgia paired with a reminder to not dwell too much on the past.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
THE INFINITE MILES
HANNAH FERGESEN
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
EPISODE ONE
THE BIG BANG
Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
EPISODE TWO
CLOSED TIME-LIKE CURVES
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
EPISODE THREE
COSMIC INFLATION
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
EPISODE FOUR
LIGHT VELOCITY
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
EPISODE FIVE
TESSERACT
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
EPISODE SIX
ENTANGLEMENT
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
EPISODE SEVEN
FUNDAMENTAL FORCES
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
EPISODE EIGHT
OMEGA POINT
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
After
Credits
Special Thanks
Historical Figures Whose Stories Were Referenced:
About the Author
Copyright © 2023 by Hannah Fergesen
E-book published in 2023 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Luis Alejandro Cruz Castillo
All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission
of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-200-85010-5
Library e-book ISBN 979-8-200-85009-9
Fiction / Science Fiction / Time Travel
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Dad
I love you. I miss you.
Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.
—Euripides, translated by Anne Carson
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Before you dive in to The Infinite Miles, there are two things I want you to know:
The first is that the world of this story is not our world. It’s an alternate universe, a separate timeline. I’ve traded the classic Western TV show Gunsmoke for a series called Gunpowder, and while David Bowie sadly never made it to the stage in this alternate world, an androgynous rockstar named Miles Moonraker did. And though Doctor Who doesn’t exist in this universe, what does exist is a beloved TV show about an alien named the Argonaut who traverses space-time in his Tesseract Engine, Argo.
My hope is that, in imagining an alternate version of our world, I have given you permission as an observer of an exotic dimension to imagine other differences too. To see yourself there, in spaces you perhaps have been denied entry to here. This world is your oyster, as much as it’s Harper Starling’s, or Miles’s, or even mine. If you want to believe it, you are encouraged to do so, as emphatically as Peggy believes in the Argonaut, and as ardently as Harper believes in the stars.
Which brings me to the second thing I’d like you to know going in: Through characters like Miles, Harper, and even the Incarnate, this book celebrates people in all their imperfect forms. The ones making terrible choices, for both selfish and unselfish reasons. The ones seeking and exploring their truth, no matter how many times that truth might change throughout their lifetimes. The ones who give in to the darkness, and the ones who refuse to be subsumed.
If you have lost someone, or if you have lost yourself and returned from the brink, you will understand. And even if you haven’t, I hope this message is still clear.
Hate is a parasite. Starve it out.
EPISODE ONE
THE BIG BANG
This week on Infinite Odyssey:
The Argonaut is in trouble as he makes for Sintoh, the Kixorians hot on his trail. He has something they want, and they’ll stop at nothing to get their mechanized hands on it. The sanctuary planet is in sight—can he make it? Or will he be waylaid in the past, as Argo’s time crystal seems to be on the fritz? Find out this week on Infinite Odyssey!
BEFORE
It happened on the glittering black sand beach of a distant, alien world. If you’d told Peggy a year ago that she was going to die so very far from home, light-years and light-years away, she would have said you were one crayon short of a full pack. She’d always assumed she could slip right back into her life whenever she was ready, that everything would be waiting for her, exactly as she’d left it. Her life, frozen in amber.
It was arrogant, when you think about it. Did she really think her friends had no lives of their own? That her family members were automatons who powered down whenever she left the house and rebooted when she graced them all with her presence again? But in a way, that’s exactly what she thought.
Now here she was, basking in the light of a different sun innumerable miles from Earth, sunbathing in her two-piece on a lush world uncharted by anyone, human or alien alike, as though it were any old Tuesday at the local pool.
The dying didn’t start right away, of course. She and Miles splashed around for hours in that virgin, ballerina-pink water, laughing with abandon. The water had a strange iron tang, and the air smelled like heated metal, but they could ignore that when everything else was so beautiful.
Their adventures were so often like this. She’d wake up to find him in her driveway, listening to old Miles Moonraker songs in the driver’s seat of his 1972 Dodge Charger. She would climb in and tease him for the music—“Ego, much?”—and he would ask her where, or when, she wanted to go. The car, of course, was not a car—she was a spaceship, a time ship, and she could look like anything, but with Miles at the helm, she always looked like this. Her name was Argo. She could take them anywhere, anywhen, and she loved zipping across the universe just as much as they did. They were a team, the three of them. Bonded by their travels, their laughter. By days like this.
Peggy had watched Infinite Odyssey for years before she met Miles. She’d watched its main character, the Argonaut, zip around the universe with Argo, his Tesseract Engine, saving people, having adventures across time and space. When she met the real Argonaut herself at Rockwood Music Hall on a warm night in autumn, she’d understood right away just who she’d met. It was easy to say yes to the adventure that was offered; it was all she’d ever dreamed about.
Though on Earth Argo’s preferred form was usually a vintage muscle car, today the ship had taken on the shape of a common planet hopper, artificial rust gathering around her faux nuts and bolts, just in case they were spotted, and though the tangled forest where the ship hid loomed behind her, Peggy could feel Argo’s comforting presence just through the trees, like a mother watching her children splash around from her beach blanket. In the calm, rosy water, Miles floated on his back, pale face slathered in zinc sunscreen at Peggy’s behest. Once, she might have said there was one thing that could sweeten this deal. But it had been a long time since she’d felt any guilt about not including Harper in her extracurricular time-and-space travel. This, this was paradise. Just the three of them on a far-off world.
She felt the change in Argo’s energy even from the water, the distress that crashed over the ship’s former calm. Then, Miles was trundling them both out of the water, trying to pull Peggy out faster than she could swim. She swallowed a gulp of water
Miles told her to call him if she started to feel strange after he dropped her off, but she didn’t understand why he would say that, and he refused to elaborate. She spent the rest of the night furious with him, a foreign feeling, for hiding whatever had happened from her. They were supposed to be partners, a team. She knew Miles had lived a life, many lifetimes, that he’d lost people before Peggy came into the picture, but that didn’t mean he had the right to pull away when something scared him.
She was so angry with him that when she did start to feel strange later that night—a dull ache blooming at the place where her spine met her skull—she didn’t call him. She gritted her teeth and bore the pain out of pure spite. She got a text from Harper at ten o’clock, something trivial about InfiniCon being in Boston that year, and would Peggy want to go with her? Could they just talk about what happened, please?
And in that moment, blinking down at the harsh light of her phone screen, she forgot who Harper was. Harper Starling, who had, once upon a time, been her best friend, the girl with whom she’d done everything, anything, before Miles came into Peggy’s life and everything changed. She read the name in her phone over and over, trying to conjure the memory, any memory at all, of Harper Starling. Of why she might love her.
It happened very quickly after that. Other memories blinked out of existence, small things at first, like her favorite color or candy bar, followed by bigger things—her days as number-one on the varsity track team, homecoming dances and childhood sleepovers and InfiniCons with Harper, matching their sequined dresses and hairstyles, telling each other scary stories from their sleeping bags, cosplaying together as the Argonaut and his various first mates. The way her father’s avgolemono never tasted like her mother’s, no matter hard he tried, probably because he was just too damn Irish. The day she met Miles, back when he wasn’t Miles, but Flora, tall and beautiful and auburn-haired, and Peggy had been swept off her feet and into the stars.
In a flash, all of it was gone, and the world went dark for Peggy Mara.
She would have moments of awareness, after. Tiny insignificant moments she hoarded like precious gems in the starlit prison of her mind. She’d awake for seconds and find herself on a desolate moon or a bustling space station, wondering just how the hell she got there. Something else was in her body, driving it around, and she had no control at all. Then she was underwater again, lost in the tangle of the labyrinth that had been built in her own mind. She didn’t remember what life was like before this. She didn’t remember her own name. She didn’t remember that she had once traveled across space and time with a man named Miles. She found refuge in the broken booth of a crumbling diner, the remnant of one memory that had burrowed deep enough to remain. And there she waited, praying that someone, anyone at all, might find her there.
ONE
NEW YORK CITY, SUMMER, 2023
On the third anniversary of Peggy Mara’s mysterious disappearance, Harper was watching old episodes of Infinite Odyssey. She lay in the tangled sheets of her small bed, the laptop perched on her chest, blue light flashing against the walls of the otherwise dark room. It was late, a few minutes past midnight, and she was winding down from a long, chaotic day waitressing at the Starlight Diner with discounted wine and an episode from one of the later seasons.
It was the one where the Argonaut’s estranged wife, a human with whom he’d fallen in love despite a contentious introduction many years before, sacrificed herself to save the inhabitants of a planet on the verge of collapse. The loss of his partner would haunt him for the rest of the series, and when their son joined the Argonaut on his jaunt across the galaxies, sometimes the older alien would look into the boy’s eyes and tell him, with such heaviness, that he saw his mother there.
Harper always cried with the Argonaut after his wife drew her final breaths. Even now, the episode not even halfway over, she felt the threat of tears just behind her eyes, though she’d argue it was for very different reasons now. Thank god her roommate was spending the night at the apartment of her current situationship.
Peggy had never made fun of Harper for her emotion. They’d watched it together a million times, the lines and actions of each character chiseled into their memories, recited with perfect execution around mouthfuls of popcorn. This was the episode she’d been watching three years ago, tangled in these same pilling sheets in this very same room, trying to soothe the fresh ache of a friendship ruined only days prior, when her cell phone rang. And like a spiteful asshole, she had looked at the name on the screen and decided not to answer.
When Harper had finally plucked up the courage to listen to the voicemail days later, long after she heard the news and got on a plane back to Denver for the memorial service, she was dismayed to find it was garbled and staticky, as if Peggy were trying to call from inside an elevator, and revealed nothing more about what happened that night than what Harper would later come to know.
These days she only watched the show once a year. She’d buy herself a bottle of something cheap and dry and red, acidic enough to chap her mouth after a few glasses, and pull the show up on whatever streaming service owned it that year. She would watch that episode once, twice, maybe even three times, every detail burned into her memory like the fine lines of a laser-cut image. The next morning her hangover would rage as she shuffled blearily onto the 1 train and shuttled herself to Riverdale for work, scrolling through the newest images from the James Webb Space Telescope until the train stuttered into the station.
It was an act of penitence more than anything—an invitation for the universe to rewrite history, if the universe were so inclined. They never had found a body, after all. Or perhaps it was a faith in something else, Harper’s true religion—a kind of scientific method, an arranging of circumstances so that they resembled the original event, an experiment to see if she could replicate, and then change, what happened next.
But no one else had seen the text message Peggy sent Harper after their fight in the diner, the last one Harper would ever receive from her, mere months before her disappearance. She couldn’t bear to show it to Greg Mara, who was content to believe his daughter had been in an innocent accident, kayaking or maybe rock climbing alone, something reckless but forgivable, as she was wont to do. But if anyone knew that Peggy was not coming back, that the universe would not be performing any miracles, that science would not be replicating the experiment of Peggy’s last moments on Earth, it was Harper.
I’m sorry that everything got so fucked up. And I’m saying it now because I’m blocking your number so there won’t be another chance. Don’t look for me, Harper. I’m never coming home.
The episode ended and she clicked the Start Over icon. While the opening credits rolled and the jaunty theme music warbled out of her shitty laptop speakers, she got up and poured herself another glass of wine in the cluttered kitchen. She stopped in the bedroom doorway upon returning, her instinct to go back to the bed, to nestle down into the covers and never come out, warring with a new thought, one she hadn’t had in three years.
