by Nikki Harmon
“And you know me, I’m Sujatha, can we get on with this now?” I like her bluntness, I think.
“Indeed. Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on and why I am here?” We sit down, Amy hands me a water bottle and Sujatha begins to explain.
“You are a scientist, right? At least a teacher, so you should be able to understand even if you can’t believe it right away. Professor Patel has made the most wonderful (someone snorts), the most game-changing discovery in the history of mankind.”
Marcus pipes up, “I’m not so sure about that Sujatha; I consider the discovery of dark matter to be…” Manny interrupts, “No, no I tell you, the invention of heating/cooling has changed the entire evolution of our …”
“Would you guys shut up! I am trying to talk to Kim! The Kim!” Sujatha yells. They quiet down, some taking out their phones or laptops to occupy their thoughts.
“As I was saying, Professor Patel has made one hell of a discovery, and, while it may revolutionize the way we live in the future, right now, we are worried that it is being used to change things that should not be changed. It is becoming dangerous, and we think they have plans to … and I am aware that it sounds dramatic … to control the world.”
I stare at her trying to determine if she’s crazy, if I’m on a hidden camera, if they are about to hurt me or if this is the beginning of cult indoctrination. I decide to remain quiet.
“Ok, let me back up. Do you know what quantum mechanics says about the many-worlds theory? Every time a decision is made and an action taken, the opposing possibility or decision also pops into existence in a parallel but occasionally interacting universe. It’s controversial and not many scientists believe it because there was just no way to prove or disprove it. Until now. Professor Patel has found a way to allow people to jump dimensions. You can do it. We all can do it.”
“I can do what now?” I quip.
“You can jump into parallel universes. You have … many times actually.”
I scan the room for a camera crew, or juice or satanic symbols, but I see nothing. So I say, “How do you know? How could you even know if I’m jumping universes if you are staying in your universe?” I ask trying to humor them.
“We know you from the other realities. You are different there. You are you but you are definitely different.”
“What do you mean? Different?” I wonder why I am even asking this question.
Sujatha looks around for help. Ramon sits up. “I don’t remember you from this time, but from 24XB, you were friends with my sister, Savvy. Good friends I think.” He shrugs.
Amy nods, “We meet in the future 29XH. You have these long beautiful locks, with blondish highlights and cowrie shells. You are working at NASA building their robotic arms for space junk retrieval. And true, you are friends with Savvy Montana. I think she is your supervisor.”
Manny says, “Kim, you are my mentor when I enter Temple in 17BG. You were a senior and I was a freshman and you taught me the ropes. You were very kind to me and honest. I appreciated that. Now, thank god, neither of us stayed in that timeline because … uh, it was just too painful but we got out, so that’s good…”
“Wait, what … what was painful? I don’t get it. So I’ve met you all before? Or I will? Maybe?”
Sujatha puts a hand on my arm. “Yeah, the thing is this. We jump a lot. We go on missions for Patel and Wasserman, so we jump a lot. Sometimes we stay for a while, sometimes we’re just there for a few hours, it depends on the mission, but we run into the same people a lot but under different conditions. Grayson, can you bring the map?”
Grayson comes over with a “map” on graph paper but it looks like a big colorful tree to me. Every line has a different color: some run with each other then branch off; some have dotted lines; some have wavy lines; some are numbered; and some are blank or have question marks. Then I notice that the map is made of separate but overlapping sheaves of thin tissue paper. The X-axis marks years starting from 1775 to 2398. The Y-axis is labeled 10 to 100. I try to comprehend what I’m looking at but I can’t even fathom it. The top sheet is labeled Sujatha; the line color is deep maroon. She has at least 20 lines, under her is Marcus who is navy blue and has at least 30 or 40 lines. I look up at him. He meets my gaze.
“I’m better at quick jumps. I figure out the problem, solve it, and jump back to wherever they tell me to.”
I turn the page and see Amy’s page, her line color is gold but she only has 5 lines and they are all close together. I look at her. “They like me for special long term assignments. And sometimes I forget to come back right away. Sometimes I just like where I am, you know?” I nod at her and flip through the other pages. Grayson’s lines go deep into the 1700s and I think I understand the gruffness of his manner. He’s been roughing it. The jumps must be so jarring. I smooth the papers down and look at the totality looking for a pattern or a clue. I see a point where all the lines intersect and guess this is where and when they met each other and Professor Patel. I point and look up. “Yup, that’s when it started.” I follow and see just a few lines foray into the future but they look to me like search patterns, probes looking for something and most are forest green, Ramon.
“You are searching for something?” I ask him. He nods but doesn’t respond.
I turn to Sujatha. “Do I have a page like this?”
“We tried to draw one but it’s only off our chance encounters so it doesn’t make much sense.”
“Can I see it?” Sujatha gestures to Grayson who hands it to Liam who brings it over gingerly. My line color is brown, but they are right, my three lines are very close together and don’t really go anywhere. I lay mine on top and notice one of my lines runs smack dab next to the one where they all met, and it ends right before the intersection.
“I wonder what happened here. What is that four years ago?” I say to myself. Amy clears her throat.
“Funny you should notice that,” she says. “We think that’s where you need to go back.”
“What? Why?”
“We think that is the tipping point. Where this all can be stopped, never started actually.”
I place the papers down on the table and take a deep breath. I take a sip of water. My phone chimes and startles all of us. It’s a text from Jackson. My dinner is getting cold. I put my phone away without answering.
“What is this place?”
Marcus steps forward. “You gave us the idea for this. We found your journal with your experiments, but you don’t remember that now. Anyway, we started keeping notebooks, records of our jumps and what we did, but we didn’t want Patel or Wasserman to find them. So, Grayson went back and bought this building in what was it? 1883? So whenever we are and wherever we are, we can come here and leave our notes and mark our lines for the others to see. It’s unusual that we are all here at the same time. We communicate by leaving messages.” He gestures to the chalkboard covered in gibberish. “It’s a safe haven.”
I look at the stacks of notebooks, the water, the tea kettle, the much-used couches.
“I suppose that’s some sort of code?” I say pointing to the chalkboard.
“Of course.” Marcus sits down next to me. “We’ve gotten together in this time because we thought we should all be here to meet with you. One of us might seem, you know, crazy. But seven of us … well, we still could be crazy, but I think you know more than you know, right? Your abilities are not as refined as ours, and you haven’t had the practice, but from what I’ve studied about your brain waves, you have more natural affinity for jumping than most.”
My head hurts and I want to run out of here and back home to my nice warm cozy sofa with some General Tso’s chicken and a spring roll and watch good old movies and snuggle with my husband who loves me. Instead, I ask for more water and ask to see my notebooks. Grayson brings them to me. I open them and see my handwriting. I see my doodles, my misspellings, my tendency to bail on the last two letters of a word. I don’t remember writing these notes but I fee
l like I did. Apparently, I experimented with jumping and after a few attempts, I did it. I changed the color of the walls in my bedroom. And there’s stuff in there about Patel and the room, Lab #19. My stomach drops as I read about the metal walls and Mabel … Mabel … I was just thinking that name. It’s a plant? I laugh out loud. It stops after a mention of a guy with a thick accent. I leaf through the book but there is no more. Amy comes over.
“The notebook is from this timeline.” She points to the brown line on the paper that ends abruptly. “The one that stops. We call it 23AK.”
“23AK” I repeat. I’m hovering between believing and not believing. No, that’s not true. I believe and disbelieve at the same time. I look at the people around me who all seem so sincere but I’m looking at their “evidence” and I can envision how a deranged mind could have made up the whole thing. I hear a noise in the back of my head, a growling growing in the back of my brain. My vision starts to double and blur. I have two choices. I want to leave and be free of this mess, this burden, this insanity. I could just walk right out that door. I tilt my head right and can almost see myself standing up, holding my belly, feigning some kind of distress and walking out the door. I tilt my head left and I see me sitting down, drinking water and listening to Marcus. I shake my head to clear it and I notice Grayson watching me. He recognizes the choices floating in front of me and though his face remains stony, his eyes are wild with desperate fear. It frightens me but it sobers me up enough to make my choice. I sit down and grab my bottle of water. My vision stabilizes, my brain settles and I exhale with relief at having made a decision. Marcus comes and sits across from me. He reaches for my knee.
“Listen there are some things you have to know about before we get started,” he mumbles.
“Get started doing what?” I ask.
“You have to finish your conditioning and then you have to train.”
“What conditioning? What training?”
“Kim, you have the talent, we can all see that, but Patel never got to finish your radiation blasts, your dosing and you never even had basic training.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“In 23AK, you were the first person, that we know about, that Patel began conditioning. You thought you were doing experiments on plant communication but really Patel was blasting your molecules with gamma rays while you were dousing yourself with various combinations of LSD and Salvia divinorum.”
“He did what?”
“Disrupted your atomic structure and altered your brain chemistry so that you could achieve the sensitivity necessary to perceive the parallel universes and the flexibility to move into them. At least that’s how we think it works.”
I sit there gaping.
“With a little more dosing and some focus training you should be able to jump at will, with intention.
“You guys have had all that stuff?
“Yeah.”
“Did you know about it or did he experiment without your knowledge?”
“Well, because of you or Joan, he didn’t have to experiment on us, he just conditioned us and trained us to work for him.”
“Joan? Who is Joan?”
Grayson brings over a crate with two notebooks in it. I open up the top notebook. In very neat, block handwriting a young woman describes her concern, then confusion, then suspicions about Dr. Patel. I flip through the book and see records of her experiments, her successes, her failures.
“I don’t get it. It seems just like what I wrote in my notebooks.” As I say the words, I realize that I am affirming belief in them and their assertions. It feels odd but then it doesn’t anymore; it feels right.
“Look at the dates,” says Amy.
I compare the dates in her notebook with the dates in mine. They coincide.
“She’s from a couple of other timelines, ones when you did not go to Temple or if you did, you did not major in science, like this one.”
“Oh.”
“She was the recipient of the Mendel Honors Science Scholarship when you didn’t take it.”
“Oh. But I didn’t get that … I didn’t even try for it.” Amy shrugs at me. “You got it in other timelines, Kim, just not this one.”
I turn back to Marcus. “OK, so where is she now?”
“She’s dead,” says Ramon. “They found her body halfway to the Poconos in a cornfield.”
“How did she die?” I ask.
“The police report said she was shot in the back. No suspects.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About four years, now. Nobody was ever charged with her murder, but we know it was Wasserman or someone working for him,” says Sujatha.
“How do you know who it was?”
“After Joan died, Patel gave up all his research to Wasserman and we were recruited. You and Joan were just work-study students for Patel. We go on missions for Wasserman under the guise of work-study for Patel, of course.”
I’m quiet. I need a minute. A woman is dead. A woman who could have been me, I guess. I’m shuffling through all these facts, which make sense only if you believe the basic craziness that all assembled can jump into other possible universes. So, I look around again, close my eyes and pray. I pray for God’s protection and grace. I pray for wisdom and I pray for my family who, in my heart of hearts I know I am leaving behind. I pray for their forgiveness. When I open my eyes, everyone is looking at me.
“Were you just napping?” Sujatha demands incredulously. I laugh.
“No, I prayed.” Marcus nods his head.
“Glad you are here to help us, Kim. We need you.”
“Ok”, I say, “well, let’s get to work.”
Chapter 24
To say I was not prepared for what came next would be an understatement. After I assented to help them, nothing more specific was said about how I would do that, but all the discussion turned to what appears to be an old and well-worn argument among them – how to complete my training and conditioning and who would be in charge of it. As there is 10% of me that is holding on to the idea that these people are crazy and I was unwittingly joining a cult, the theatrics that ensue do nothing to quell my suspicions. Half of the group is emphatic about me going to the labs at Temple in the “old 19” so I could receive virtually the same dosage and have the same environment as my previous training. The other half insists that I get the new and improved conditioning that they are familiar with and can replicate here in the safe house. I just listen.
Then the argument turns to the trainer – who can be spared, who can slip away out of their life to jump, who has the least to lose and the most to give. I thought Manny would win out; he seems very fond of me, but in the end, it is Amy who will be missed the least from this timeline and who, I suspect, the others would like to get in some practice making quick jumps. I like Amy and find her the bravest and most rational so I am happy about the decision. I do feel bad that she won’t be missed though. I hope I would be. At that moment, at that thought, the baby moves. A subtle rolling that feels like gas but it isn’t. It is life. I gulp.
I am ok to leave my life behind, I can already feel myself sloughing it off like so much dead skin, but what will happen to this baby I already love? My baby. Will he or she cease to exist? I watch the group so sure and passionate. They are making plans, swapping stories, figuring out logistics to problems I cannot begin to fathom. I take a step back away from them. What will “dosing” do to this baby? What about the radiation, the pheromones? I take another step back. What kind of woman would put her baby at risk like that? Is that who I am/will be? I eyeball the door that leads to the hallway. There is nobody between the door and me, but Manny could reach me if he sees me. If I jump into another timeline, will she just disappear? Will I be killing her? Erasing her existence? How can I do that to my own child? I turn towards the door, intent on saving our two souls when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait.” It’s Amy. “I know that you are worried about the baby and
I might have a plan.”
I turn towards her like in a dream and breathe a sigh of relief. The room is suddenly quiet. I belatedly realize that the roar had already started. As my vision sharpens, I stare hard at Amy.
“I hope you have something good because I don’t know if I can leave the baby behind. I’m its mother.”
“I know. I’ve been working on a plan since we found you here.”
“You have?” exclaims Sujatha from across the room. “Why?”
“Really? Do you really think it wouldn’t mean anything to her?”
Sujatha shrugs. “I don’t know, she doesn’t have children in any of the other threads.”
“I’m standing right here you know,” I interject.
“Right. Sorry. We’re used to talking about you. I guess we’ll have to get used to talking to you.”
I turn to Sujatha. “No children at all?” She shakes her head. Any prospects? Husbands? Boyfriends?” Sujatha looks at Amy. Amy coughs into her hand.
“Yeah, it’s weird to see you with a husband. In all your other threads … you only dated women.”
I look from Amy to the rest of the group watching us. They are all nodding and smirking. Ramon grins.
“Oh. Sorry? I don’t know what to say. I’m gay in every other thread? Geez…” I sit down. Amy rushes over.
“It’s not a big deal to any of us, Kim. Manny’s gay and Sujatha is constantly staring at my boobs …”
A shoe flies from across the room. “I am not, you simpleton!”
The whole group laughs. Amy waves them off and they all turn back to their former discussions.