“What the hell you doing home already, you bastard?”
In a panic, he wriggled up on his elbows, back against the wall (
the headboard is gone
) feeling the comforting bulge of his gun against his waist and wondering what kind of evil had taken over his wife in the last twenty four hours. She’d become a fucking monster. Yes, a fucking monster.
She yanked the covers off the bed in one quick jerking motion, sending them against the siding closet door which, Leonard now realized, was off its hinges. “If you’re gonna be home today, then no use laying around.
Git
busy, you lazy fuck. Clean the damn kitchen.”
He tried to speak, but the words couldn’t wrestle their way past the sudden lump in his throat. He held his hands up in defense as her unending barrage of curses and insults slammed into him like pelting raindrops. After she seemed to tire, she stormed out of the room, screaming crazily, banging pots and pans in the kitchen.
Leonard staggered from the bed, trying to make sense of the situation, but finding no possible way to do so in his frazzled state of mind. Sure, he could sit here and think and think until his brain was burnt to a crisp, but he’d still have no plausible answer to this current state of events.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more confusing.
He came to a quick assumption that something horribly metaphysical had taken place, that after tripping into the blue light, he’d ended up back in Fairview in Hemmingway Park, and that somehow things had
changed
, that the life he once knew no longer existed.
Last night George found traces of a blue-colored residue on both Delaney’s and Samantha’s clothing. He took samples, ran them through the computer and found them to be identical in nature. An odd and unique mixture of chemicals. He mentioned a few materials, uranium, xenon, some others. Those are nuclear elements.
He peered at the clock. It read eleven-fifteen. He’d slept for only forty-five minutes.
Can’t be...can’t possibly be.
Somehow that boring life you once knew, Len, doesn’t seem so bad. Does it?
He jumped from the bed, trying to ignore Janice’s tantrum, and lurched into the study. His books were gone. All of them. Even the bookshelf that once lined the entire far wall. It had been removed, jagged holes in the wall where it had once been bolted. No more Arthur C. Clarke (he’d collected every damn first edition), no more Robert
Heinlen
, no more Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were all gone.
A tear came to his eye and he raced into the kitchen where Janice leaned against the counter eating beef ravioli out of the can. She looked at him, her eyes wild, yet hesitant, as if she could see the flames of ire burning in his own eyes. Breathing rapidly, he said, “Janice...where are my books?”
“Books? What books? What the hell are you talking about?”
“My science fiction collection. There used to be a bookshelf in the study, remember?”
She looked at him oddly, head cocked, then answered, “You got rid of them about five years ago. At the garage sale.”
Even though this was the first thing she’d said in a calm tone of voice, it was perhaps the most horribly instigating thing anyone had ever uttered to him in his forty-seven years. He pulled his gun, placed it against her neck. “I said where the
fuck
are my books?” Emphasis on the word
fuck
. So she’d understand.
Tears sprang from her eyes like raindrops. Leonard didn’t think she was capable of crying. “I told you...” she stammered.
That was when Greg walked in. His son.
The high
schooler
had gone from studious jock to full-fledged
dirtbag
in his transformation. Earrings, long hair, worn jeans and Iron Maiden tee-shirt, a cigarette dangling from a pierced lip. A real looker. He took a step back when he saw the gun.
“What the fuck, Dad?” Greg said.
“Jesus Christ!” Leonard yelled.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“What are
you
doing?” Greg took a step closer. Leonard could see the potential for conflict brewing in the kid’s eyes.
Still has his mother’s eyes
, Leonard thought.
Just like in the real world. Only here their eyes are absurdly maniacal. If this were the real world I’d have these two locked up.
Leonard pulled the gun away from Janice and pointed it at Greg. His ‘son’ raised his hands up in a defensive posture, a too-cool move that exhibited prior practice; Leonard figured this wasn’t his only brush with the law, with or without his father’s awareness.
“You,” he said. “Get over there with your mother.”
Greg stepped over to her, nudging up against her. Janice yelled, “Have you lost your fucking mind? Have you?”
“
Yo
dad, you could lose your job, you know.”
Leonard opened the back door, and very calmly stepped out onto the porch. Peering in through the torn screen, he shook his head at the mess that had become of his family, then said with no rationality, “Fuck you all.”
Gun still in hand, he ran back into the neighborhood he lived in for twenty-three years, down Gaston street and far away from the house he hoped he’d never have to return to again.
And all the while he wondered if he was losing his mind.
“I use this room as a safe haven of sorts, when I need to be alone. I’ve set the keyless entry so that only my card will work. Of course if someone really wanted to get in, they could reprogram the lock from any terminal, but half the building doesn’t even know this room is here, and the other half doesn’t really care. The only one we have to watch out for is Brutus. For now, though, I think we’re safe.”
“Who’s Brutus?”
“Head of security. He’s the boss’s right-hand man. He runs all of the computers in the building, and pretty much does whatever the boss says.”
“The boss? I thought you said
I
owned this place. Wouldn’t that make
me
the boss?” Richard’s attempt at sarcasm showed through, and Pam responded with a frown.
“I think it’s time we talk.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
She motioned towards a small leather sofa against the back wall. “Come here,” she said, then sat down next to him, placing her elbows on her knees. She looked like a passenger waiting for a flight to be announced. “I always do my best thinking in this room. It’s one of the only places here that you’ll find no cameras.”
Richard settled into the smooth upholstery. It felt really good, his muscles and bones graciously coming to rest. Pam jumped up and retrieved a bottle of water from a small refrigerator by the door, walked back over and handed it to him, which he
downed
in a few gulps. After a minute, and another half bottle of water, he asked, “So what is this company, Quant--”
“
Quantugen
.” She sat back down on the couch.
“
Quantugen
. I don’t like the sound of it already.”
“They do some pretty interesting things here.”
“And it all has to do with me?”
Pam leaned back against the white cloth pillow on the arm of the sofa, making herself comfortable, Richard assumed, for the long talk ahead of them. “Are you familiar with the term ‘Quantum Physics’?”
Richard searched his mind for answers, thousands of voices suddenly waking up to yell out answers, as if they were all contestants on a game show. Somewhere inside his head he heard the phrase ‘time travel’.
“Time travel?”
She grinned. “Yes, that’s correct. Time travel plays a major role here. But it isn’t our primary concern.”
“Okay...so what is?”
“I want you to realize and understand everything that’s been happening, and in order to do so, you need to know everything from the beginning. So...you ready?”
Richard nodded.
“Okay. The lights, the dreams you’ve been having for about two years...”
“Yes...”
“Well...they materialized because of a breakthrough in quantum physics research that occurred exactly three years ago.”
“Three years ago...” He paused, startled, then asked, “Does this time travel you speak of have anything to do with my dreams?”
“Directly, nothing at all. But your dreams did begin as a result of an all-out effort to assess the still fully developmental science. Let me give you a bit of a primer. Even with all our research, human time travel, as much as we understand of it, to this day remains a physical impossibility. This is because of two reasons. One, no one can ever travel back in time. It can’t be done. Science--and nature--won’t allow it. Secondly, time travel into the future, although plausible, is still in its very early trial and error stages. It does have its possibilities, but as of this time, these possibilities exist only in theory.”
“Try me.”
“Well, basically, you’d have to spin around in a centrifuge at the speed of light for approximately three years in order to return to earth a hundred years later. The physical toll would be near-deadly, and besides, a permanent residence in an unexplored future might prove highly undesirable. Now don’t get me wrong, future travel is without question a very intriguing concept, but the merits of such a trip are still
unexaminable
since we have not yet reached a designated point in the future where our test-travelers, a few brave chimpanzees in stasis, eventually return. That is, if they return at all. Only at that point can we--or shall I say our successors, since we’ll all be dead by then--appropriately judge the outcome of such a voyage with any true data. But again, this is of no direct concern to us, because time travel is still in the early stages of experimentation, and doesn’t wholly apply to your personal situation.“
“I’m totally lost. Why tell me all of this?”
“Because I need to preface my explanation. As I said, everything that’s been happening to you over the past three years has resulted from an intensive study in time travel. It is a direct result of these studies that we stumbled upon something extraordinary, something that ultimately led to your plight...a totally unexpected revelation.”
“A revelation?”
She took a deep breath, then said, “Richard...have you ever once said to yourself, ‘What if?’”
“What if?”
“That’s right...like, how would my life be different today if I’d made only one small change in the past, if I’d done something entirely different?“
Richard pondered the thought, then offered, “I suppose...we all kinda wish we could undo the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Is this what you mean?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Then, yes, I can definitely say I regret making certain decisions in life. Ones that could’ve taken me down different paths. But I can’t think of too many instances because, and I’ve never told you before--but somehow I guess you already know--I really don’t remember much of anything prior to three years ago. Only recently, with everything that’s been going on, have snippets of my past memories come back. And even then, they seem disjointed. For instance, at one point I remember being a college student, and then I clearly recall being a schoolteacher in a classroom. And then I could remember myself sitting in a dark alley shooting up heroin. All of these images are
memories
, as clear as day, that don’t tie in with one another. They really don’t make any sense.”
“Actually, they do make sense. There’s a reason for such diverse memories.”
“Okay...so you want to tell me what they are?”
“The reason why you remember all these different things is because…because Richard
Sparke
has lived all the lives from which these memories come from.”
“Wait a minute...how could I have lived a half-dozen lives?”
“I didn’t say you. I said Richard
Sparke
.”
“Huh?”
“And actually, there’s only five lives.”
Richard hesitated, rubbed his tired eyes. “If you’re trying to confuse me further, you’re doing a fine job.”
“I’m sorry...”
“Pam, Heather, whoever the hell you are. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
She nodded, then started speaking, never once taking her eyes off of Richard. “Let me tell you a story. A little more than four years ago, a great scientist, highly accomplished in the field of quantum physics, defied all of science and nature and the doubts of his peers, and miraculously found a way to harvest the same unique energy that is present in black holes in space. By doing so, he was able to reverse the process and create white holes in a laboratory environment. He found, quite by accident, that this energy could be channeled toward the dilation of time.”
“Dilation of time?”
“He was able to alter it. But not in a sense where he could utilize it for travel--although those were his initial intentions. This scientist, by accident, was able to
split
time, whereas, and I’m trying to explain this in the
simplest of terms to help you understand, it branches off into parallel lines that run concurrently with one another. Hence you have multiple timelines that co-exist alongside one another--albeit on different planes of existence.” She held her forearms out as if warding off a blow to demonstrate her explanation.