by RMGilmour
“If you’re real, and if your machine is as all powerful as you say, then I will be here every day at sunset, waiting for you.”
If he wasn’t real and didn’t come back, then I would have successfully diverted myself from the short path to Shady Lane.
His pause, the longest yet, caused me to believe that I had imagined him, and that all I’d really done was admit my own insanity to myself.
I’ll be there, or rather… here, he chuckled.
I inhaled deeply, exhaled just as loudly.
What was I doing?
But all I could do was smile.
2
Decisions
I knew the moment he left; I was alone again. The sense of wholeness that had filled me was gone, replaced once more by the empty void. Though at least, the void had shrunk to a manageable size, and around those empty edges I could feel a dangling sense of hope, that maybe I wasn’t completely lost after all.
And the following morning I didn’t call Dr. Riley as I’d promised myself I would. If I was going crazy then I’d rather live in my delusion just a little longer, before I let them take me away and fill me with unknown substances.
I spent the first part of the day typing and retyping the same two paragraphs over and over, but the words had become a jumbled mess and I soon gave up, opting instead for a little light online research.
The first word I typed, the only word I could recall that needed explaining, was spacetime. Only what came up was more confusion. It wasn’t so much the content - the graphs and the explanations, I’d anticipated an abundance of confusion there, but more so the fact that spacetime was a real concept here on this planet, in this dimension, and had been so it seemed, for many years. I had to ask myself where I’d been all through college, to not come across a single person to have a single conversation with, nor to even so much as hear any of the terms that filled the website pages I visited. The only word I was really familiar with was Einstein, but so were most third graders.
It was mid-afternoon when I decided to walk away. There was a whole new world of fascinating information that I felt a need to immerse myself in. But science was never my best subject, and I knew that if I ever had a hope of understanding even a fraction of what I’d read, I’d need time to think and digest the details, become familiar with the technical terms and mind-bending concepts.
I spent the short remainder of the day flicking channels between strange natural occurrences around the planet, and the emotional discovery of King Richard III. But I was a history buff, and the once lost King won out. And it was during the big reveal of his DNA results that I felt my empty void fill with life once more. I swiped at the moisture on my cheeks, and attempted to subtly clear my voice.
“You’re early,” I tried not to croak.
What’s wrong with your voice?
“Nothing. Why?”
What is that?
“You mean the TV, or the show I was watching?”
But he didn’t respond. I doubted he’d ever seen a TV, or even heard of one before, and I had to think how best to word it, to make it not seem so trivial and indulgent.
“Television. It’s a receiver of sound and images. A way for us to obtain information and be entertained,” I told him. But I turned the thing off to avoid needing to explain the overabundance of trivial entertainment.
This is where you live?
“Um, yes,” I murmured, glancing around, hoping it was clean. I sure wasn’t expecting visitors.
Most of it makes sense.
“You’re early,” I said again, wanting to change the subject. I also didn’t want to spend the rest of the day explaining the different appliances in my apartment. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he lived with his machine giving him everything he wanted. I was quite sure he would see the way I lived in comparison to his, as positively ancient and somewhat barbaric.
I wanted to see the sky before it turned to sunset.
“Ok then, let’s go.” And I almost ran out of the door, barely remembering my jacket and keys on the way out.
I took my time checking for oncoming traffic before I crossed the road to the forest. It was hard enough focusing, knowing I had a voice in my head, I couldn’t let myself forget to look before I crossed. Not that there was much traffic around anyway, but cars had a way of coming out of nowhere.
And as I glanced about me, I hoped there weren’t going to be too many questions about the outside world, the cars, or even the pavement I walked on. But sure enough, they came. Fortunately, he accepted my too-simple answers for everything.
Ah, now this looks like the outside of our city, he remarked, as we hiked the short distance through the forest. But he paused mid-sentence for several confusing moments, then resumed before I could question him. From what I can see, from the inside anyway.
“You don’t go outside of your city? Not even just to enjoy the serenity?”
No. No one from the inside can go outside. We… there are dangers… contagions.
“I’m sorry.”
Why?
His question threw me. At first, I wasn’t sure if he misunderstood my sympathy for his situation, or if perhaps there was no sympathy even in question.
“You don’t miss going outside?”
He softly snorted, clearly the latter was true, and he paused again before responding.
I am well used to the inside. I’ve never actually been outside of the city, and I haven’t even thought about it for several hundred years. Until now.
Several. Hundred. Years. The words reverberated through my mind. I stopped walking, and I’m sure I stopped breathing, to better understand in the absolute silence that I’d heard right.
Why did we stop? We‘re not at the river yet.
“How… How old are you?” I asked, and cautiously resumed my slow gait across the field.
Hm, well I stopped counting a long while back, I didn’t see the point. But I guess I’d have to be a little over five hundred years.
A little over… what? I thought.
“You’re five hundred years old?” I whispered this as I stared about me, hoping I was alone, and almost tripped over thin air. I thought it remarkable that his words could steal the volume from my voice. As if having a conversation in my head with someone from another dimension, wasn’t crazy enough.
More or less. Why, how old are you?
“I’m… way too young for you,” I joked, although technically correct. “Are you… one of the oldest people in your city?”
His laughter once more, spread through me. I sighed, grateful for every nuance.
Hardly. There are some who are much… much older than me, he said, sounding as though he was teasing someone, or perhaps thinking of someone, or a group in particular, I had no idea which. I wanted to ask though, how old the oldest person was, but he continued before my words made it out.
There were many that didn’t want to stay, even before my time. They left while they were still able to.
“You mean because of the dangers outside of your city?”
Yes.
“What dangers…”
My turn.
“Your turn what?”
To ask the questions.
Oh no. I made it to the river and sat upon the edge, dangling my legs over the side once more, but my instinct was to turn and run. I was not prepared for questions. Not yet. But there was nowhere to run to. He was in my head.
You don’t have to answer. But I have to ask anyway.
“Why?”
Mason, a friend - he’s monitoring me, tells me he hasn’t seen two biological signatures so similar as ours, for many years. This is why we can communicate. And I want to get to know the person I’m so connected to.
“Ok,” I acceded. Though I needed to make a concerted effort to keep my breathing even. But then again, if I passed out from lack of oxygen I might be able to avoid the questions.
No, only delay t
hem, he laughed, filling me with peace once more.
“Go easy.”
How about your name?
“Lydia Henchwick.” One down, too many more to go.
Married?
“No,” I whispered. Not anymore, and not a choice either of us made, I thought, but couldn’t say out loud. I was grateful when he didn’t question it.
Children?
“No.”
He stopped for a moment and I hoped that was it, but no such luck.
How long have you lived… where you are now?
I felt the depth of his question, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. It would require an answer that I feared, if discussed, would reopen the void despite his presence, and sink me back into its emptiness.
“This is beginning to feel like an assessment, or an evaluation maybe.”
It is, and if you fail I’ll never speak to you again.
“Ha-ha, funny guy!”
The problem was he could have been completely serious, and I wouldn’t have known the difference. I might have years before. But not so much now.
Who was the person on the wall above your television?
And then they came. Flooding me. The memories surfacing one after the other, needing to be heard. I gulped back my fear and began with Loss number one.
“My brother.”
Where is he now?
“Sam. He was in the army. Died in combat,” I missed him dearly. He was my best friend.
I’m sorry.
Telling him hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought it would be. Perhaps because my brother’s death made the most sense. When he left I knew there was a chance he might not return. I was somewhat prepared, even minuscule-y so. And he died a hero, for a cause he believed in. Though his death was only the beginning of the holes in my resolve; it was what followed that sank me.
You don’t have to say it.
But now that I’d started, I felt compelled to keep going. Numbers two, three and four.
“When I was five my mother was diagnosed with cancer - a painful, devastating disease,” I tried to explain. “But she beat it. Two months after we got the news of Sam’s death, my father had a heart attack. My mother said he died of a broken heart.”
I wanted to laugh at my mother’s attempt at humor, but I’d never been able to. I couldn’t even now. It was too close to the truth.
“Not long after, her cancer came back. And two years later she…” left me alone. “I went to live with my aunt to finish school, but apparently cancer runs in my family. I lost her my third year of college.”
I couldn’t provide any more detail than that. The words refused to form.
Loss number five… Nooo, I exhaled, and shut down that memory and the images before they began.
I laid back in the grass and stared up at the sky. It was still early enough to be blue with perfect white puffs, and I focused on the movement of the clouds as they made their slow, ever-changing way across the sky. My other focus was on my breathing, as Dr. Riley had taught me. Feel it go in and feel it go out. Release the emotion with it.
I couldn’t say how much time had passed before I realized neither of us had spoken. At first, I questioned, yet again, whether he was still with me or not, maybe he wasn’t joking. Maybe I didn’t pass his evaluation and he was gone. But after a brief analysis of my void, it was still filled with life. He was still there, I was sure.
Don’t say anymore, he whispered.
It was his tone that reassured me that he understood if not the pain, at least the loss. And I was glad for the reprieve; I couldn’t have said anymore anyway.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon watching the occasional clouds form and reform, avoiding almost all conversation, except for brief remarks at the beauty of the sky as the solid blue submitted to the gold and red sunset hues, which then transformed into the star-filled night once more.
I could watch that every day for the rest of my life, he finally said. Is the beginning of your day just as fascinating?
“It is. But different. Gentle. The sunset is like the sun stretching to maintain its domination of the sky. But the night, as the dawn approaches, the night peacefully submits. Its darkness surrendering to shades of blue, welcoming the sun’s first light.”
I’d like to experience that with you. I’d love to re-create it. Feel like staying up all night?
“Tonight?” I wasn’t sure if I would be able to. Although, technically, I had nothing better to do, and I hadn’t experienced the dawn for a long time.
Or tomorrow, if you prefer.
Nice of him to give me an out.
“I’ll try,” I chuckled. Staying awake through the dawn was no easy feat.
So, the night is all darkness and stars, and all through the day there is blue sky with clouds playing across it?
“Well, yes, unless it’s raining, then the clouds take over turning it grey and dark.”
Rain? he murmured. Ah, I believe I saw images of that once.
“It doesn’t rain inside your city?”
No, he snorted. Nothing gets in or out. There was something ominous about the way he said it, nothing gets in or out… as though he was trapped.
And there were a million questions I wanted to ask him about his home, how he lived, what he looked like even, but I was afraid of the answers he’d give. What if he wasn’t as nice as what he seemed? What if I couldn’t comprehend his explanations? But mostly I was afraid of feeling more than what I’d currently allowed myself. Dr. Riley had been trying to get me back into the world of the living for quite some time, but everyone I knew died, and I couldn’t risk getting close to anyone else; I’d be killing them, and I’d be killing me all over again.
Jordan however, was different. I had no choice but to communicate with him and reveal myself to him, but at least he was safe. If we were to meet like this every day, if this was all we could have, I’d be fine with that. There was a good chance with him being in another dimension, that his association with me would not kill him too.
I don’t know if I can show you what I look like, he said, hesitantly. No doubt choosing to ignore the rest of my inner rant. But I’m very much like you. Well, the males in your plane anyway.
“You look like us?”
Of course, we are the same. I’m not from another planet, just a different spacetime, remember?
“You say that like I should know what it means.”
Didn’t you spend all day reading about it?
“And yet, you still think I should know what it means.”
His laughter moved through me once more, filling more of the hole with life, turning the darkness to happiness, and I smiled. All the drugs in Shady Lane would never do what he could. Delusional or not, he was the remedy I needed, and I wanted him to stay.
“Ok,” I decided, rising from the grass.
Time for me to go?
“Um, no. Unless you want to.”
Why would I want to?
I ignored his question and began walking home.
“I would like to show you something.”
Hmm, I can’t wait.
“I meant my books, magazine articles, financial stuff.”
Of course, I’m sorry.
“Why?”
You sounded disappointed.
“Amused.”
He chuckled at my unexpected response.
3
The Baring of One’s Soul
Once I was home, I ran my fingers across the spines of the books upon my bookshelves. And there were many. I pulled the two that I’d written, one at a time. I opened them each and caressed the pages, the way I once did when they were first published, explaining they were my babies.
Read them to me.
“These?”
Yes.
I thought about it for only a moment. I highly doubted he would find financial guidance for married women, and the evolution of women in the workplace
interesting, and I would end up needing to explain so much more about society than I wanted to. Instead, I decided that if he wanted to know me, then I would show him the things that captivated my soul.
“No. I have something better.”
I pulled from the shelf my favorite collection of Robert Frost poems and began with the one that resonated within me. The one that helped me understand that I was still alive – “Lodged”.
And we read into the night. First all of my favorites, and then turning back through the pages to the ones I’d missed. Until shortly before the dawn, while the darkness was still firmly in its place, I wrapped myself in a large blanket and tip-toed back to the field. I leapt over the river and crossed the wide distance of the opposite field, stopping at a small copse of trees. Before sitting, I turned back toward the river, squinting through the darkness, attempting to make out the darker tree line near my apartment, and I decided we were far enough away to have a grand view of the sky.
In the silence of the night, we bid each star farewell as one by one they retreated with the darkness, making way for the sun’s first breath as it rolled upward and across the horizon, bringing with it the first hint of gold, awakening a world of color.
∞
I couldn’t say what time it was when we said goodnight, but it was in the middle of a yawn over my coffee that I felt him return.
“Good morning,” I mumbled into my cup, thankful that I’d already showered and dressed. Though it was barely passed lunch, and I was surprised he was back so soon.
Good afternoon, I believe, he corrected. I’m sorry for being so early, but I couldn’t wait any longer.
Even though I found his statement intriguing, I began to wrack my brain for anything I may have promised during the night.
“For what?”
I want to hear more, he softly admitted.
“More poetry? You don’t have poetry… where you are?”
We do. But no, no more poetry.
“You didn’t like it?”
I loved it. But I’ve never heard it read the way you read it.
“And how do I read it?”