Anomaly

Igor opened his eyes to the steady rhythm of click-clack, click-clack. Today was the day. Shifting Day.

He got out of bed, narrowly avoided hitting his head on the bunk above him, and tiptoed past his two youngest sisters, still fast asleep on the floor. Their bedroom had flooded again last night, the third time in a month. He inched open the top drawer of a small dresser and pulled out the best clothes he had. He looked at them with a grimace, then pulled them on.

A picture in a gold frame sat on the dresser. Igor’s eyes rested on it for a moment. His grandfather stared back at him. He held a small, silver coin in one outstretched hand. His lucky coin, he used to say. He never went anywhere without it. But now, that same coin sat next to the picture frame, glinting in the morning light. Suddenly, it flipped over and landed on the opposite side with a gentle clack. Igor pocketed it, then silently slipped out of the room.

In the kitchen, he was met with the sound of background static from a tiny TV set.

“It’s Shifting Day, folks! Anomalies are popping up all over. Just this morning, I found a grape sewn to my shirt in place of a button! Can you believe it, Margaret?” The reporter turned to his co-host with a grin. “I sure can, Steve!” She replied. “But you know what I can’t believe? The size of today’s grand prize! The Anomalous Awareness Agency must expect some big things to shift today.” Steve turned back to the camera, and smiled genially. “Well, it is the third shifting day this year already, Margaret! I think the AAA is right to expect something big to go missing.”

“$20,000” a voice said. Igor jumped. His oldest sister sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal. “That’s the grand prize today,” she continued. “Can you imagine how many poor saps are gonna waste their whole day looking all over the city for nothing?”

Igor’s cheeks flushed. “Yeah, right. Crazy. Well, I’m heading out early to catch up with some friends.” He grabbed a piece of toast and turned towards the door.

“Wait a second. You’re going out there too, aren’t you?” His sister said to his back. “It’s a scam, Igor. You know the odds. You’ll never find anything.”

Igor turned back. “Grandda didn’t think it was a scam, Tawny.”

Tawny laughed. “Grandda never found anything either, Eeg, and he spent his whole life looking. Right up until the day he died. He’s actually the best example of why I’m right.”

Igor’s face reddened. “You’re not right, Tawny! And he’s not dead! He … he shifted.” Igor winced. Even he could hear how crazy that sounded.

Tawny rolled her eyes. “Oh, Eeg. Are you still on about that? If Grandda had shifted, the AAA would have already found him somewhere. It’s been three years, and there’s been no sign of him. Face it, he died.”

Igor lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “Not if he shifted through time, they wouldn’t have.”

Tawny threw up her arms, exasperated. “Ugh, Igor, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one! Anomalies shift through space, not time! Everyone knows that. If they did shift through time, don’t you think we’d find things from, like, the past or something?”

Igor pulled the coin from his pocket and held it out. “Grandpa did! This coin, remember?”

Tawny snorted, “That’s just a regular old, dirty quarter! Grandda was just teasing you; he didn’t find it on a dig in the Amazon. And if he did, it’s because he put it there himself, when no one was looking.”

Igor shook his head, grabbed another slice of toast, and left. His sister called after him, but he ignored her. Sometimes, he wished she’d been the one who had shifted away.

Igor walked down the street, towards the park. His sister would never come around, but Igor knew his grandda was out there somewhere, or at some time. He had a plan to find him. If he could prove that anomalies really could shift through time, then maybe the AAA could figure out how to bring his grandda back. Unfortunately, that meant he had to find an anomaly that had actually shifted through time. He thought of the coin. It wouldn’t help; it really was just a normal quarter, albeit extremely old and beat up looking. He needed something more convincing.

Igor made it to the park. This was the best place he knew to look for anomalies. All around him, people were searching, checking under benches and in the bushes. Igor shook his head. Amateurs. His sister was right about one thing. There would be a lot of disappointed people by the end of today. But not Igor. His grandda had taught him every last trick in the book. Igor pulled out the coin and threw it into the air. Its spin was slow, and in one direction. Just like a coin would normally spin if there were no anomalies around. He was going the wrong way. He turned left and threw it up again. This time, it spun faster. He walked forward, then tossed it again. He’d win that prize in no time.

Hours later, Igor slumped onto a bench. He had searched all day but hadn’t found anything worthwhile. He pulled a small, black notebook from his back pocket. It had “Field Book” written in childish handwriting on the cover. He opened to a blank page and scribbled a few notes about where he’d been and what he’d seen. A green traffic light turned purple, a pear growing on an orange tree, and a man who claimed to have seen a lug nut on his wheel suddenly turn into a bee and fly away. Nothing worth $20,000, though. He sighed. He had used all his grandfather’s tricks, too. Like reading the coin properly and focusing his search around more permanent features of the landscape, like a river or a hill. Or like considering the value of what you hoped to find, since shifting always exchanged items of equal significance. That last part was tricky though. How could you really say what something’s true value was?

He sighed and stood up. It was getting dark. Another shifting day come and gone, and still with nothing to show for all his efforts. Maybe his sister was right. The chances really were abysmal. “I’m sorry Grandda,” Igor muttered. Then he turned for home.

On his way, he passed underneath the outspread branches of a tree. Out of habit, he tossed the coin up. It paused in mid-air, as if suspended by an invisible wire. Then it started to spin, faster and faster. “What the …?” But before he could finish, the sound of cracking branches made him look up. Something small and black plummeted straight down towards him. With a yelp, he dove out of the way.

Igor got up and, with growing excitement, went to examine the object. When searching for anomalies, there was no such thing as coincidence.

Or maybe there was. He looked at the small, black object with reservation. It looked a lot like an avocado. He looked up. And this was an avocado tree. He sighed.

A sharp, metallic ring sounded, and he looked around. The coin! He’d forgotten all about it. It landed on the path nearby, but was bouncing up and down on the ground like a ball, still turning rapidly. Suddenly, it darted down the path as if trying to escape.

Igor gasped. Without a second thought, he pocketed the perfectly normal fruit and dashed after the coin. For a few moments, he tried unsuccessfully to grab it. Lunging left and right with increasing desperation, he finally caught it just as it jumped towards the street. It wriggled wildly in his hand, so he shoved it into a coat pocket and zipped it shut. The coin beat against his chest for a few seconds, then finally stopped.

Igor looked up. He was standing right across from an AAA portal. But he had nothing to show the agency, no way to win the prize. Then, he thought of the coin. Would they believe him? He shrugged. It was worth a shot. After all, it was Shifting Day. Anything could happen.

Inside, Igor took a number. One by one, people went to the kiosk and presented their anomalies. One by one, they all went away empty-handed. Finally, it was Igor’s turn.

The woman at the kiosk looked at him with a bored expression, obviously expecting yet another household trinket. Apprehensively, Igor reached into his pocket for the coin, but felt something wet and slimy instead. “Ugh,” he said and pulled out the avocado. When had he smashed it? It was much bigger than before, and there were tears all across the peel, with large bits of bright green showing through. It looked as if the insides didn’t quite fit anymore. His eyes widened. Carefully, he pulled the avocado apart until all that was left was a small object, covered in green. He rinsed it with a splash of water from his bottle, then showed it to the woman. It was a tiny figurine. Old, by the looks of it. Ancient, even. The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh my …!” She reached for it, and Igor, numb with shock, dropped it gently in her hand. She scanned it. “Well, that doesn’t match anything in our system, but it’s clearly an anomaly.” She looked at it, then pressed a switch on her desk. “Ma’am, you’d better come down here, there’s something you need to see.”

That night, Igor took his family out for ice cream. The president of the AAA herself had come. After some back and forth with her and the kiosk attendant, Igor finally convinced them to call the local museum. The museum curator confirmed it; the figurine was from an ancient civilization living on the banks of the Amazon river. It had shifted halfway across the globe and through some 1500 years of time to wind up in the core of Igor’s avocado. Nobody could believe it. Igor’s grandda had been right.

Igor stood in his room once again, staring at a newly framed certificate on the wall. It read, “Shifting Day Champion: Igor Papolapovich. First Prize - $20,000.” Igor had stayed up late into the night, looking at universities. His “field of study?,” all the questionnaires had asked. Anomalist, he had written. Just like his grandda. He sighed. But that was for another day. He stripped off his jacket and his clothes, then looked through his pockets for the coin. But it was gone. He thought hard: when was the last time he had felt it move? The penny dropped. It was right after he had pocketed it. Back when the avocado had been a normal fruit.

Nearly 1500 years before Igor realized his grandfather’s coin was gone, a man stood alongside a riverbank deep in the Amazon jungle. It was nighttime, but the moon was especially bright. He held a tiny figurine out over the river, paused, then dropped it. It fell into the water with a plop. Moments later, the man bent down and fished something out of the reeds. He straightened. In his hand, a tiny piece of silver flashed in the moonlight. The man flipped it into the air, watched it spin, then caught it again. Chuckling, he placed it in the pocket of his jacket. From another pocket, he pulled out a small, black notebook. It was worn and faded, but he could still make out the words “Field Book” on the cover. He opened it. The yellowed pages were filled to the brim with notes, equations, and diagrams. He thumbed through until he found one with an image of the coin, took out a pen and wrote, “experiment complete”.