“How did you know I worked for the city?”
“You’re one of the gardeners. I’ve seen you working here in front of the hospital several times... just this morning, in fact.”
“You’re very observant,” Derek said.
“Not really, actually.”
Atasoy looked around the room. He looked uncertain about something.
“I must admit, you look very familiar to me,” the doctor said finally. “Have we met somewhere else, sometime?”
“I’ve been wondering that too,” Derek answered. “To be honest, I’m not here because of my father’s diabetes.”
“Why then?”
“I’ve been having strange dreams. And ideas. And thoughts. You name it.”
“And you want me to help? I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise.”
“I’m not looking for treatment.”
The doctor looked him in the eyes. “What do you want then?”
“I... I had a dream, well, just a short fragment of a dream, really. Can... can we go into your office, maybe? Gita, you too?”
The moment had come. Now was the time Atasoy was going to throw him out into the corridor.
“That’s very unusual. Your request, I mean,” the doctor said.
But he didn’t kick Derek out. Instead, Atasoy walked into his office and made a gesture to Gita that she should follow him. Derek prayed silently that Atasoy was not the kind of crazy who kept a gun in his desk drawer and would start shooting at the slightest hint of something going wrong. He followed the two as smoothly and deliberately as possible so that they wouldn’t mistake him for a threat.
Atasoy was standing with his back to the window. Derek approached him.
“In my dream, you are turned around and looking up at the rift,” Derek said. “I’m standing to your right. And Gita’s standing to the right of me.”
Derek breathed in and out deeply. He stood next to Atasoy. The doctor used an old-fashioned cologne. Derek looked at his profile, his sharp nose, his strong chin. No, this was wrong. He must’ve been standing on his other side. Apparently, Atasoy looked noticeably different from the right than from the left.
“Just a second,” he said. Derek moved to the other side of the doctor. “This is right.”
A couple of clouds appeared in the sky. The rift didn’t matter to them. Isaac and Doug were off in the distance, sitting on the bench under a maple tree, their backs turned toward him. The residents of Ottawa had been standing down below, looking up at this strange new phenomenon.
Atasoy didn’t say anything. Gita kept looking at him. She was slowly getting nervous and clearly didn’t understand what was going on.
“And then the airplane flew into the rift,” the doctor said suddenly.
Yes! That’s exactly what happened! Derek had stood here and watched the unknown airplane as it disappeared. He got goosebumps because that was completely impossible. There had been absolutely no accidents in connection with the rift if you didn’t count the few traffic accidents caused by astonished drivers without autopilot.
“That’s what I see in my mind too,” Derek said. “But we’ve got to be wrong. I haven’t heard of any accidents or deaths. Maybe the plane just reappeared somewhere else?”
“Don’t you think that if a plane suddenly disappeared, and then reappeared somewhere else, someone would have said something?” the doctor asked.
That’s true! Derek thought. There were air traffic controllers who tracked everything by radar, and of course there were the relatives waiting at the destination airports.
“Maybe we should search the Internet to be sure,” Derek proposed.
Atasoy nodded. “Let’s do that,” he said. “To be honest, I’ve been dreaming this scene for the last two nights.”
“Me too.”
“You know, I’m no mystic, I’m a doctor. I believe in science. I don’t believe we can share dreams with other people many miles away. Where do you live? Isn’t it on Colorado Road? There must be something behind this. What do dreams use as material? Our memories.”
Derek was confused. How does the doctor know my address?
“You mean, we have memories of something that didn’t really happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Mr. McMaster. If we both have the same memory, I think that points to it not being fake.”
“Gita, can you remember what happened when we saw the rift here?” Derek asked.
The woman shook her head.
“Too bad,” Atasoy said. “But that doesn’t change what we need to do. We need to check our memories.”
“Maybe the government is hiding something,” Derek said. “Maybe they want us to believe that the rift is harmless.”
“I can’t believe that. There were hundreds of people here. All of them must have seen the plane. Yet nobody is complaining about anything happening. The government would have had to find some way to simultaneously manipulate the memories of all those people. That kind of technology doesn’t exist.”
“If you say so, Doc.”
Derek didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. Why would he even have been here looking up at the rift with Atasoy? He hadn’t felt sick for many years, and would never have voluntarily gone to see a doctor.
He looked at Atasoy. The doctor was standing at the window with his eyes closed. But Derek could tell that the doctor’s eyes were moving behind his closed eyelids. He was reminded of a scene from a horror movie.
“You think we should look on your computer, see whether we can find anything about this plane?” Derek asked.
“Just a moment, please.”
Of course, Derek thought, this is your office. He looked at the clock. In five minutes, I’ve got to get back to my co-workers, otherwise Isaac will get mad.
“I remember now,” the doctor said.
“What do you remember?” asked Derek.
“It wasn’t the three of us standing here,” Atasoy replied.
“No? I thought you remembered it too?”
“It wasn’t three. There were four of us. There was a patient here. She was nervous and a little bit afraid. I feel like she was afraid of something about you.”
Derek suddenly grew cold. It was true, there’d been four of them here. Mary had stood to the right of the doctor and Derek had moved to be behind her. He had put his hands on her shoulders. He felt nauseous.
“Sorry,” he said, and sat down quickly on the couch against the wall. He just made it. His top half sunk onto the cushions, his legs hanging down on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but he lacked the strength to change his position. Then two soft arms lifted his legs and shifted them onto the couch. He stayed there and listened to his heart, which felt as if it was about to jump out of his chest. Mary. She had been here!
“You gave us quite a scare,” Atasoy said. Derek opened his eyes. Something cold was on his chest. It was the probe from an ultrasound machine.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “To be safe, we brought you to the cardiologist next door. It could have been a heart attack, but everything seems to be okay.”
Derek looked at the clock. 1:30, dammit! He wanted to jump up from the exam plinth, but two hands held him down.
“We’ve already told your co-workers. Isaac said to tell you to ‘get better soon.’ He said that you looked exhausted this morning. But that wasn’t what was bothering you, was it?”
“No, doctor. It was this memory, that’s what did it.”
“We still don’t know if it really is a memory or not,” Atasoy said. “Surely you’ve heard of déjà vu? It’s a neurological phenomenon. You’re in a certain situation and you think you remember being in that situation before, but you never could possibly have been.”
“I know what déjà vu is. But this is different, don’t you think? It’s not triggered by what we’re looking at right now.”
“No? What about when we were standing in front of the window, Derek?”
“You remembered it too. How
likely is it for both of us to have the same exact déjà vu? Think of the patient. If she’s real, you must have seen her at other times when I wasn’t here.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Atasoy said. “I remember something. I... Ah, before we rack our brains, why don’t we search the Internet for the plane.”
“I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Don’t worry about work. I’ll write you a note for today. You really should take it easy. Your boss, Isaac, is really worried about you. When you were passed out, we took a quick look at your liver—the sooner you reduce your alcohol consumption, the better.”
Derek sighed. How was he supposed to fall asleep without his two or three beers at night? On the other hand, he had managed to do it last night, somehow. Sort of.
“Okay, then let’s search the net,” he said.
“We’ve got until three before my next appointment. Do you think you can make it to my office? We can use my receptionist’s computer.”
The two of them sat in front of the desk that was behind the receptionist’s counter. The entire surface of the desk was lit up—it was a giant screen. The doctor made a few unhelpful search entries. There were no hits. Finally he stood up and called for his receptionist.
“Gita, can you help us?”
Gita came walking out of the waiting room. She had a cleaning cloth in her hand and set it down on the counter.
“Gladly,” she said.
Atasoy offered her his chair, but she declined and squatted in front of the desk. Derek was surprised that this rather little person could still operate everything. She must have an extra-long torso, he thought.
“So, what do you want to know?” Gita asked.
“Four days ago, so, on the 23rd, an airplane was flying over Ottawa approximately from the northwest to the southeast,” Atasoy said.
Gita called up a map of the city and then zoomed out.
“The closest airport is Kansas City, Missouri, but that’s to the northeast,” she said.
“I don’t think it took off or landed anywhere around here. It was too high for that,” Derek said.
Gita zoomed farther out.
“The big destinations to the southeast would be Miami, Florida, or else Atlanta, Georgia,” she said.
“That’s one of Delta’s hubs,” Derek said.
“And to the northwest there’s Canada. Maybe Vancouver?” offered Gita.
“Or Seattle.” Atasoy pointed to a dot on the coast.
“That’s a distance of probably 3000 miles... Sorry, what’s that? 5000 kilometers?” Derek estimated. “Anyway, a flight time of about six hours. We’re pretty much in the middle, so the plane must have taken off around nine, ten at the latest.”
“Good, then we need all flights that departed on the 23rd within a 500-kilometer radius of Seattle with a destination somewhere around Miami,” Atasoy said.
“What if it was an international flight?” Derek asked.
“We can try that later if we don’t find anything,” the doctor replied.
“Okay. Let me try this,” Gita said.
Derek watched in fascination as the receptionist used nimble flicks of her fingers to formulate a search query with all the specified conditions. She was a real IT whiz.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked.
She looked at him in surprise, as if what she had done was a normal ability that any receptionist had.
“At college in Pune... India,” she added. “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in computer science.”
Derek was dumbfounded but didn’t dare to ask more.
“You’re wondering why I’m working as a receptionist? That’s very simple. The job was open when I came here, and I like working with people. Also, the doctor is very nice.”
She looked at Atasoy with longing eyes, but the doctor didn’t notice. The poor girl’s miserably in love, Derek thought. Why doesn’t she just say something him? He doesn’t appear to be married.
“You married, doc?” he asked.
The doctor shook his head. “And you, Mr. McMaster?”
Derek was about to shake his head too, but then he suddenly wasn’t so sure. On the contrary. Mary, she was my wife. He started feeling hot. Hopefully I’m not going to faint again. And I hope I’m not going crazy.
“I’ve got a small list here,” Gita said after two minutes. “Do you want to take a look?”
Derek and the doctor put their heads together over the screen. During the time in question, there were nine flights that should have been somewhere approximately over Ottawa, Kansas. They had all arrived at their destinations in the southeast. Nothing helpful there.
“How about canceled flights?” Atasoy asked.
“Just a second,” Gina replied, and tapped a few buttons around the screen. “I’ve found one. Departure from Seattle around 9:25 AM, planned arrival in Atlanta 3:10 PM. A feeder flight for Delta.”
“Does it list a reason why it was canceled?” Derek asked.
“Just says delayed due to traffic.”
“Thanks, Gita,” the doctor said. He picked up the telephone. “I’ll call Delta and ask why the flight was canceled.”
“Good idea,” Derek said.
Atasoy had to navigate through an automated call menu for several minutes before he could talk to a competent person. Derek stood at the window and watched his two co-workers, who were now covering the freshly sown and fertilized lawn with a thin layer of topsoil.
“Okay, I understand,” Derek heard Atasoy say finally. “Thank you very much. You too.”
“Well?” Derek asked, coming back to the receptionist’s counter.
“Nothing,” Atasoy explained. “The plane arrived too late for its next flight, so it had to be rescheduled. The passengers were rebooked, and the plane then went to New York.”
“So it didn’t disappear?”
“No. It’s flying again today.”
“Maybe we’re looking for the wrong thing,” Derek said. “Nobody noticed anything unusual. Nobody is missing their family members. And yet both of us saw a plane disappear into the rift. Maybe there really is some kind of giant cover-up.”
“A hundred passengers, that means a thousand relatives that the authorities would have to somehow silence,” Atasoy said.
“Exactly why I think it’d be impossible. Someone would have been missed, and the media’s always ready to pounce on the next sensational story.”
“So what else could explain it?”
Derek rubbed his chin. “What if, when the airplane disappeared, it changed reality somehow?”
“How would that work?” Atasoy asked.
“I don’t know, I’m not a physicist. But just suppose, using common sense, the principle of cause and effect still applies in this world. If I bang my head against that wall, I’ll hurt my head. If someone takes the wall away before I hit it, then I won’t get hurt.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, Derek.”
Nobody has ever said that to me before. Derek turned red. “The airplane—it’s gone, or we can’t find it anymore. At least, there are no traces of it. Anywhere. For cause and effect still to apply, then, it also must never have taken off in a southeasterly direction. Its disappearance changed reality.”
“But think about what that would mean,” Atasoy said. “Maybe it just flew somewhere else. Or maybe all of those passengers who wanted to go to Atlanta changed their minds.”
“Those are only two possibilities,” Derek said. “Maybe it goes even deeper. At the moment the airplane disappeared, maybe then it had never even been made. The people sitting inside it had then never even existed.”
“Wouldn’t their family notice they were gone?” Gita asked.
“Not if it were ‘the new reality.’ You can’t miss someone who was never there,” Derek said.
“That sounds really crazy,” the doctor said. “But if our memories are correct, that might be one explanation.”
“And what if my father had b
een sitting in that airplane?” Gita asked. “I couldn’t just forget him. If he never existed, I never would have existed either.”
“That would be logical,” Atasoy said. “But we don’t know how exactly it would work. Maybe you would have had a different father, someone who wasn’t on that plane.”
Derek started feeling hot again when Gita mentioned her father. Hadn’t Mary wanted her mother to fly? One by one, other snippets of memories appeared in his mind. Derek saw himself in the terminal parking lot of the Kansas City Airport, Terminal B. There must have been security cameras there! If Mary’s mother had been in an airplane that disappeared into the rift, then... he didn’t dare follow his thoughts any further.
“Derek, I’m thinking of the patient standing next to me. Mary? She was your wife?”
Derek nodded.
“And you miss her?”
Derek nodded again. ‘Miss’ was not at all the right word for what he was feeling, but he had no idea what the right word was.
“Could there have been family members on that airplane that we saw disappear?”
He shook his head, not to indicate ‘no,’ but trying to clear his mind. “Her mother was supposed to fly to Kansas City,” he said with a shaking voice. “I think I even remember the route we took to pick her up. Hold on. I don’t feel so good.”
He slumped onto the closest chair and started to feel a little better at once.
“I bet if we look at the flight schedule, there won’t be any connection to the time when you were at the airport,” Atasoy said.
“Give me a second... I’ll check,” Gita said. “When would that have been?”
“Day before yesterday. The afternoon. I’d taken off some extra time from work,” Derek said.
Gita tapped something. “Yes, there was a plane, from Miami. It had a five-minute delay and landed at 3:34 PM.”
That could fit. But something still wasn’t right. If the plane hadn’t disappeared into the rift, then shouldn’t his step-mother still exist, and thus, his wife too? Derek had the feeling of being trapped in a time loop.
“Can you tell me where the plane went to after that?” he asked.
The Rift: Hard Science Fiction Page 10