by Brona Mills
‘You were supposed to be documenting things from Mike’s life. How could you miss this?’
‘I don’t know!’ Liam screams.
I flinch and keep my voice low. ‘What does this mean?’
‘It means that maybe Audrey is right, and Caitlyn is alive. That she only disappeared somewhere because David changed something. That this version of reality is wrong. That where Audrey came from—where Caitlyn is alive and well—might be the place we need to get back to,’ Ethan says.
‘And David?’ I ask. ‘Will he be in that version too?’
‘I hope so. We’ll never know because Audrey isn’t from a time beyond this point. She can’t tell us if it’s the way it’s supposed to be or not,’ Liam says.
‘You need to be prepared for the fact that sometimes, people we love just die.’ Ethan narrows his eyes. ‘And we can wish they didn’t. We can curse the universe and dream about a different reality where they’re still with us, but we can’t change it. No matter how much it hurts. This is real life and everyone’s happy-ever-after ends one day.’
I place my hand over my belly before I even realise I’ve moved. ‘I know,’ I choke.
‘Why can’t we get a reality where we are all okay?’ Audrey walks around her living room, analysing the family pictures adorning the walls. ‘Everything’s the same, but there are little things off-kilter.’
‘Like what?’ Liam asks.
‘This picture.’ She taps on the glass of one of the frames. ‘We met Caitlyn in Brazil one summer Mike was working. She took the picture, but the sun was shining too bright from where she was standing and the glare took up half the shot.’
We all gather around the picture of Audrey and Mike on a picnic blanket with their four kids.
‘Mike hung it anyway. Said it was like having part of her in the picture.’
‘There’s no glare here,’ I say.
‘No,’ Mike says. ‘Someone in the park took the picture for us. I’m going to check on Andrew and the girls.’ He kisses Audrey on the forehead. ‘I want you to sit down and rest. Discharging yourself isn’t something I’m happy about.’
‘I wasn’t about to let Andrew come home without me,’ she says.
Mike nods in understanding, then jogs up the stairs while the rest of us settle around the coffee table.
‘I’ve been going through some boxes I had in storage based on what you told me about my relationship with Caitlyn.’ Liam places a box on the table and digs through it while I make everyone coffee and tea.
‘We went to Ecuador on our honeymoon?’ Liam asks.
Audrey nods into her mug of tea.
Liam spreads a map of the earth across the table, which has faded notes around the equator line. ‘It was my original research basis for anchorage. The centre of the earth might have a relationship to time travel. Do you think Caitlyn might have gone there to look for something relating to the time travel?’
‘That’s where she went missing,’ Mike speaks from the doorway.
Audrey shakes her head. ‘No. She went there first on a long list of places she travelled, but she was always okay. She called every Sunday afternoon, like clockwork. You always booked her airfares and she worked from town to town to cover her bills. She only ever needed hotel money once when someone she was working for never gave her last paycheck. She came home at the end of last year. She met Liam and the two of them hit it off quick.’ She looks Liam in the eye. ‘It’s like you were made for each other.’
‘Why don’t we remember any of this?’ I look at Ethan and Liam.
‘Do you think if I get back to my real home, that Andrew will still be okay there?’ Audrey takes hold of Mike’s hand and he sits in the chair next to her.
Ethan clears his throat. ‘Audrey, I think you are home. There is nothing to prove that a person can skip from one version of reality to another.’
‘Except DD. He was stuck in an alternate reality when he travelled. He managed to get out and go back to save me. Perhaps with him skipping to an alternate, we all skipped as well.’
‘An alternate future,’ Ethan corrects me. ‘Not an alternate reality. There is a difference.’
‘How so?’ Mike asks.
‘Our research has so far shown us that when choices are made that can affect the future, like the butterfly effect or whatever you want to call it, the alternative future merely ceases to exist.’ Liam rolls his map up. ‘It’s not as simple as jumping from one version of reality to an alternative. Everyone and everything in the whole universe skips to the alternative future with us. It’s not as simple as getting Audrey and David back to their origin, it’s getting the whole universe back to the right reality.
‘The solution could be simple, though.’ Ethan suggests. ‘When David was travelling to save Stella and Max, he found himself in a different future. Much like Audrey has found herself here with us. David was able to travel again and change the past, to alter his version of the future. When Mike made the wish on his twentieth birthday that first time, he was able to influence his version of his future. We are all living at the centre of our own universe, able to shape our perceptions and experiences. All we need to do is get Mike to work on the exactness of his desires. He is after all the person who started all of this.’
‘We don’t need the earth’s core to alter our own perceptions of reality,’ Liam states, like he’s finally understanding. ‘It can be used as an anchorage to certain places and towns, when time travellers are skipping alternatives, but using the people we love as an anchor is stronger. That’s why Audrey never got lost—she was always anchored to Mike. That’s what DD was always trying to tell us.’
‘He said something like that to me once, that you gravitate to people,’ I tell them.
Liam nods his head slowly. ‘I’ve been concentrating on the wrong thing. Focusing on the earth and the universe.’
‘What does that mean, to those of us who don’t have PhDs in science fiction?’ I ask.
‘When David figured out how to harness the time travel to his own ability, he was able to bend his perceptions of reality to suit himself. In our lives we are the centre of our own universe. Our own perceptions of reality become reality. He was able to bend his perceptions to his own desires. To keep Stella and Max alive. He embedded himself in the circumstances so deeply, that his own universe could only help him facilitate that outcome.’
‘And when he tried to save our baby?’
Ethan sighs. ‘The universe was confused. David has spent so long keeping you alive, there was no way to save you both. Unfortunately, the baby, Stella, was never going to survive. For whatever reason, you only get one child in this life. By David attempting to save the baby, he continuously put your life on the line, and you always died. Because David’s will to keep you alive in his universe was so strong, it allowed him to go back and try again.’
‘Seventeen times,’ I whisper. ‘He said he’d been there seventeen times, and the outcome was always the same.’
‘Each time, the version he left behind ceased to exist, and he tried again,’ Ethan says.
‘If we skip over to the alternative future that Audrey says is real. If we want to live in an alternative future where Caitlyn is alive, we have to take a risk? Are we willing to skip somewhere else and have this version of reality cease to exist? What if we get back to where Audrey says she is from, and it’s worse?’ Mike asks.
‘What if it’s better?’ I ask.
Ethan nods but doesn’t make eye contact with me. ‘DD tried to make significant changes to his past, to alter his future, but the outcome was always the same. If you try to sway too far off your intended path, the universe will throw all these things at us so we’ll want to go back to the original.’
‘Like Stella dying,’ Mike says. ‘Every time David tried to save the baby, the outcome was always worse. They both died.’
‘It meant that DD was finally content to let the original design be as it was. When I found DD after Nathan stabbed him, he
told me his whole universe would collapse if you weren’t in it. That he chose to leave a version of his future where he got to live, but you weren’t there with him. And if you tried to stop him from saving you this last time, then it would all be for nothing. That he needed you to be alive, if he was ever going to be happy, even for the short times you two had together. He needs you alive in his reality.’
‘This is a good thing,’ Liam tells us.
‘How is David being dead so I can live a good thing?’
‘Because, if he was able to influence someone living in his version of a future through time travel, we can influence it too.’ Liam says. ‘Whatever David did has triggered an alternative future for us.’
‘So he needs to wake up before we can fix it?’ I ask.
Ethan shakes his head. ‘Someone is trying to blend the versions of reality. Perhaps get him, and by default us, back to the original.’
‘Caitlyn?’ Liam asks.
‘It’s a good guess. She’s also missing in our reality here,’ Ethan replies.
‘But how would she know what to do?’ Audrey asks.
‘Perhaps in your reality, she knew more than she let on,’ Ethan paces the floor.
‘We need to get moving.’ Liam stands and checks his watch. ‘We don’t have much of the day left.’
‘You’re talking about sending Audrey away again?’ Mike asks from the couch. ‘I’m sorry, Stella, but I just got her back. We just got Andrew back. What if we change those things?’
‘Not Audrey,’ Liam tells him. ‘All of us.’
‘We don’t know the first thing about facilitating time travel.’ Mike gestures from himself and Audrey and finishes with me. ‘David was the one who worked on the science side of things. You guys are the ones who know what you’re doing.’
‘But this all started with you.’ Liam says. ‘What if David’s version of reality is actually yours? We’re all here, gathered in a country that we otherwise wouldn’t have been in, discussing time travel that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to, if you hadn’t made that first wish. You and Audrey are the key to bringing us all together, and David advancing the research as far as he did.’
Mike puts his arm around Audrey.
‘We’re going back to England,’ Liam says.
‘What good is that going to do? You said we don’t need a physical location.’
‘We’re going to England in 1997, when this all began.’ Ethan looks at his watch. ‘Metaphorically speaking, of course.’ Ethan’s eyes twinkle. ‘It’s still your birthday, Mike. It’s still a leap year. Let’s get this started now, before we need to wait another four years to attempt to bring Caitlyn and David back.’
Mike sets up his dining table as close as he can to resemble the pub booth he sat at with his family on his twentieth birthday and made that first wish that changed all of our lives. The men moved all the furniture out of the room and placed the dining table against the wall, in an attempt to recreate the booth the Knights were occupying.
‘Dim the lights,’ Mike tells Liam. ‘And light some candles at the far side of the room.’ Mike takes one of the four chairs and closes his eyes when Ethan tells him to.
‘Tell us how you were feeling when you made the wish,’ Liam asks.
‘I panicked. I was young and caught off guard. It was the first birthday since my grandad had died, and he used to put so much effort into our birthdays. I didn’t want to disappoint my family by not taking it seriously like we used to. My life didn’t suck, but things were tough. My parents’ financial life was always hard. And they suffered more when I moved to university. I wasn’t around to help in the family business, which meant things declined more rapidly than any of us imagined. I had this crazy idea that if I was going to wish for something, it might as well be big. It could be a career that people dreamt of. Being rich and famous and successful, and finally in a position to support my parents and even Caitlyn. If the B&B was suffering without me, it was going to fold when Caitlyn left for college, if she even got funding to go. I made a wish to be rich and successful, and the more and more details I went through in my head about working in the movie industry, the more excited I became. I realised it was something I might actually enjoy doing.’
‘And Caitlyn, what was she doing?’
‘Mostly? She was being a brat. She didn’t say much. She was sixteen and I never realised she was living with my mother who was having an affair with the neighbour, and my father was living in denial. She sat with her headphones on listening to her Walkman.’
‘Did anything happen around the wish that could have been significant for her? To why she might be missing in this version of the future?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mike tells us. ‘The usual sibling banter. I told her she could be my housekeeper when I was rich.’ Mike tenses. ‘It was a joke. She knew I’d bring her out here when I could. And she actually looked relieved at the chance to escape. I even joked that she might meet . . .’ Mike snaps his eyes open.
‘Meet who?’ Ethan asks.
‘Liam.’
Everyone turns to Liam. ‘How could you know me? It was the year before we even made contact with David.’
Mike leans forward and rests his head in his hands. ‘The tapes. I tried to steal Caitlyn’s Walkman and she panicked. She said I need those, screamed it actually. My dad said she was obsessed listening to some new singer, Liam something, and I dismissed it because I knew nothing about boybands.’ Mike chuckles. ‘What if it wasn’t music she was listening to?’
‘What else would it have been?’ Audrey asks.
‘Would Caitlyn always have been at your birthday dinners?’ Liam interrupts.
‘Of course she would have.’
‘I need to see a picture of your sister,’ Liam tells him.
Mike steps out of the room and returns with a frame of a picture that Caitlyn had emailed from one of her trips. ‘This is the last picture we have of her.’
‘She was there,’ Liam says. ‘At the dinner party I travelled to when I was a kid. The future version of me was with her at the table, and she disappeared. She’s the one who was in trouble when everyone disappeared. I always wanted to find her. To warn her or help her figure out how to stay with you guys. I would have told her about anchoring into the earth’s core, at certain locations around the earth. It’s all I’ve been focusing on up till now. If she could figure out how to gravitate to her anchor when the light came, she’d have a chance. What if I actually took her away from the others? What if I’m the reason she’s lost?’
Ethan takes the frame from Liam’s hands. ‘In Audrey’s reality, you saved her.’
‘Now we know the why and how to Caitlyn’s involvement. We need to figure out where we can make the changes to bring her back,’ Liam says.
‘That only covers the ‘how’.’ Mike tells him.
‘She’s with David. If I knew that something might happen to me in time travel, I’d cling to those who knew what they were doing. Audrey showed up to Mike and David each year. DD said he gravitated to me each time something in my life went wrong. If Caitlyn is in trouble, she would have tried to cling to you or Liam or David, since you guys know more than the rest of us. You and Liam are here, so the only one left that she could be with is David.’
‘Do you think, they’re lost out there, together?’ Mike asks.
‘Beats being lost on your own,’ I shrug.
‘So if we find David and bring him back, he should bring back Caitlyn too?’ Mike asks.
‘David and Caitlyn are both dead here,’ Ethan states. ‘But if we manage to change the course of Mike’s perception of reality, to a time when they were both alive, we might be able to trigger a version of the future where they’re alive.’
‘And will we all get to be in this version of reality?’ I ask Ethan.
‘That’s the goal,’ he says.
‘It has to work. It has to be the answer,’ Audrey says. ‘If anything, I know there’s a version of the future where Caitl
yn never went missing, so if we can get back to that line, maybe that’s the same line that David makes it back home safe.’
‘Safe,’ Mike says. ‘When the car crashed, time slowed down. It was weird. It was just like special effects in the movies.’ Mike rolls his eyes.
‘Time doesn’t actually slow down,’ Liam tells us. ‘Our brain processes everything faster in moments of danger to try and prepare ourselves. Our perception of time slows down.’
‘Well, when my perception of time slowed down, the car came to a stop. I unbuckled my seatbelt and wished for my family to be safe. I said something about not willing to pay the price, but I never checked to see if David was conscious. I just assumed he was okay.’ Mike hangs his head.
Audrey bends next to him. ‘You didn’t know.’
‘You made another wish,’ Ethan says. ‘The time of the accident was your exact birth time. The same time that sent Audrey spiralling into your past, and David along too. You made a wish for your family to be safe, and you got exactly that. Every time you make your wishes, when the circumstances are right, you get what you wish for.’
‘Caitlyn’s not safe. She’s dead. And she’s my family too.’
‘Unless the universe is keeping her safe, somewhere. We just need to find her,’ Liam says.
‘So Mike can wish us out of this?’ I ask the question that’s been niggling at me. ‘How do we change things to get David back? What wish do we need Mike to change or alternate the wording or whatever? And how the hell do we do that? Someone needs to go back in time and risk one of your butterfly effects to make sure Mike gets his wish correct the first time?’
‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Mike,’ Liam says. ‘To give you hope. Caitlyn might just be dead. She might just be missing—’
‘She’s not,’ Audrey interrupts. ‘She was alive when I left. This whole time jump thing is fucking too many things up.’
‘Me. I fucked too many things up,’ Mike says.
‘No,’ Liam corrects him. ‘This life was always yours. The alternate reality when Audrey never travelled to help you was also a wrong one for us. But something has been changed. When David disappeared too, he altered something.’