Or Not to Be

by Laura Lanni

  “Do I know you?”

  “Here’s a big hint: I used to cry in kindergarten when they made me rub your bald head and said my hair would fall out, too.”

  I remembered her. “Was your name Lizzie?”

  “That was me. Still is, even though I’m dead, too.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked. It seemed polite to sound interested, although I wasn’t so much.

  “Suicide. I was fifteen and pissed at the world. Tattooed, pierced, shaved head. Could not get happy, so I just quit. I’m your guide this time because I’m a stellar Rebounder, and you need to go back quick. I couldn’t go back—the gift of choice is only allowed once each trip, so, since I chose to die, there were no choices left for me on the dead side. Anyhoo, now I have the lovely job of quick escorts when someone slips through who shouldn’t be here yet. That’s you, fella. So get going.”

  “Wait! Please, wait,” I stalled. “Am I really in a hurry? Can’t I hang around for a while and think and maybe ask some questions?”

  She answered carefully, “No, there’s no hurry. It’s just that you’re a special case this time. There’s no reason to make any difficult decisions. You’re expected to go back. Your matter is waiting and healthy, so back you go. About the other, I don’t usually answer questions. Not my specialty. I’m not that kind of guide, like your grampa. I’m more like a traffic cop here on the dead side. Do you understand?”

  I did. But I felt good. Peaceful. No hurry. Suspended. And there were so many things to think about. Things I never made time for in my life of studying science and math all day and night.

  “I think I’ll take my time,” I announced. “I won’t ask hard questions. Just let me bounce some ideas off you. You can give your opinions on things, can’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “All right, let’s start with this: if you were still a kid, just fifteen when you died, do you know as much about the universe and life and all the big questions as someone who lived, say, to be eighty?”

  “Sure. When you die, your antimatter becomes part of the fabric of the universe. You know everything. Maybe not all at once. That would probably hurt. But gradually, as you think of things, you realize there are no mysteries that you can’t fathom. It’s cool. Makes me wonder why I spent so much time studying from those books in school while I lived.”

  “Then, right now, all I have to do is think of something that I want to understand and it will come to me?”

  “Pretty much, that’s how it seems to me. But since you’re going back soon, and I mean very soon—I have other people to help, you know—it’s possible you might not be able to get to the big and deep questions.”

  The big and deep. That sounded incredible. There was so much to the big and deep. I didn’t even know where to start. It seemed to me that I could ponder the universe at my leisure forever and maybe never cover all of the big and deep. For the curious geek in me, this was an enticing feature of death.

  “And that’s exactly why I had to get to you so fast—to intercept and point you back—because we all knew you’d like the dead side a bit more than a normal guy.” Apparently Lizzie could hear me thinking. “So, how about it? Ready to get back into the ol’ body?”

  “Not yet. I can’t stop thinking of more big and deep questions. Let’s start with this one. I want to understand what happened when I died and came back when I was six. Grampa helped me, but he didn’t call himself a Rebounder. What kind of guide was he?”

  “No guide, no matter what kind they are, may ever make the decision for a newly dead soul when there is a choice to be made. In your case, right now, there is no decision: you slipped through unexpectedly and accidentally, so you must go back. No question. No discussion. No decision. No choices. Just get back in there. But when you were six, your grampa made the decision for you.”

  “That doesn’t seem so bad to me. I was little, and I needed his help. He was the perfect guide for me.”

  “Of course he was the right guide for you,” Lizzie said. “He loved you and made you feel safe. The right guide is always chosen. When the newly dead begin to agonize over their decision, multiple guides can be sent it. But a guide isn’t supposed to do more than help the newly dead realize that they have to make decisions, and help them travel to where and when they want to go. Your grampa made your decision for you and then helped you carry it out.”

  “I guess it makes sense that there are some restrictions for guides. But just like rules and laws in life, are there reasons for the rules out here, or are they just there to keep things uniform?”

  “Please!” she boomed. “Do not belittle the universe by comparing it to your little home planet and rules crafted by humans!”

  “Sorry.” I had a vivid flashback of her temper when she was five and her subsequent screeching back in kindergarten. Lizzie hadn’t changed.

  Finally, she continued more calmly. “Of course there are reasons for guide rules. In this case, the rule of no help with decisions is because guides know so much. We’ve had the opportunity to travel at light speed, forward and backward in time, watching over our people on the living side and checking out the coolest and farthest corners of the universe. Don’t you see that knowledge of these things is too big and deep for a mere living human on our tiny rock of a planet in our little Milky Way galaxy in our remote corner of all of space?”

  “Yeah! Put it that way and it makes me feel so small.”

  “So small. Yes. And so vital. All matter and antimatter exist in a frantic dance. Together, the most miniscule pieces of matter and antimatter combine to make our beautiful wondrous universe. With all this knowledge, a guide could think she had godlike powers when she helped the newly dead. No small hunk of antimatter, no single soul, may act in a manner to try to control either space or time. Once your grampa decided he was making you go back, he used the power of his antimatter to influence yours. This well-meant mistake resulted in the ultimate sacrifice.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “He’s not in pain of any kind. What he lost was his freedom to roam and explore the universe. He gave up part of his death for you.”

  “Is he alive then?”

  “Not alive like a single human or a flower is alive. He sort of got redistributed.”

  That sounded bad. “Where is he now?”

  “Actually, I have said all I can on this big and deep point. You have the ability to reason the details out on your own. But, really, you shouldn’t waste your energy on this. You should concentrate on the task at hand here. You must return to your healthy twenty-year-old atoms. I won’t go into the details, but I personally know that there is a lot more living for you to get to. Ready now?”

  “No!” I yelled back like a petulant kindergartener. I was so far from ready. I was intoxicated from all that she told me. “Why do I remember dying and coming back when I was six?”

  “Eddie, give it up and just go back!”

  I didn’t respond. She clearly couldn’t make me, so I was staying dead until I was ready to live. Eventually, Lizzie caved.

  “You’re right. You are not supposed to remember any of that. The human mind gets messed up when it understands too much of death. All of this should remain a mystery on the living side. Have you shared any of your experiences with anyone?”

  “Nobody. Ever. It seemed that no one knew or remembered I had died, so I sort of sensed that I should keep it to myself. Now, let’s get back to my questions. I have two on the table that you are dancing around. What happened to Grampa, and why do I remember so much about being dead?”

  “These two things are related. If you figure out one, you’ll get the other. Kind of like a puzzle.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “I’ve already gone too far from of my job description with you. Didn’t I tell you first thing that my job was to just turn you around and give you a push? I can’t make you go back, but I don’t have to tell you ev
erything. I’ll only listen and guide your reasoning through this. Like bumper pads on a bowling alley.”

  “All right, bumper pad, you can keep me in line, but give me that push. How do you navigate out here?” I was too young to even try to drive on my other deathdays so I didn’t actually know the ropes.

  “Try this: think of a question and a person who knows the answer. That’ll bring you to a time in your life, or your death, where answers are brewing.”

  “That’s easy. Grampa knew everything. I’m sure he still does.”

  44

  Where Is Grampa?

  I thought hard about Grampa. He wasn’t dead anymore. His antimatter had been redistributed. I started thinking out loud, “Grampa didn’t just make the decision for me. He also helped me physically get back through my space-time crack. He used his antimatter to push mine back in. I remember feeling that.”

  Lizzie answered, “Yes, he did. He guided you back in time to the instant your antimatter and matter separated. He used the force of his antimatter to push you down.”

  “I remember it was like a big down comforter hugging me and holding me there. How can I figure out what happened to Grampa?”

  “Think about what you know about a set of forces acting on an object. In physics class, which I always hated in school, we had to draw those free body diagrams with force vectors all over the place. Matter responds to forces like pushing and pulling, electrostatic and electromagnetic fields, and friction, right? Well, similar force vectors are felt by antimatter and the combination of these forces always results in a net force that is proportional to the mass of the object. F equals M A, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, think about the forces that were acting on your antimatter when you reentered your body.”

  “Grampa’s antimatter was somehow pushing me, and then my matter started pulling my antimatter in. So both force vectors were in the same direction: toward my body.”

  Lizzie interrupted, “It wasn’t that simple. The pushing force from your grampa wasn’t directly toward your body; it was just ‘down,’ like gravity pulls on matter, toward Earth.”

  “Right, but then a component of it was pushing to my body.”

  “Sure. We’ll get back to that. Now think about what other force was acting on your antimatter. There must have been something else if your grampa had to push. This would be a force felt before your matter started pulling you in.”

  “There must have been something pushing or pulling me away from my body. Does the matter repel the antimatter? Or does the universe pull it?”

  “It’s a little of both. It’s not relevant to your analysis here that you understand the exact nature of the force, just know that whatever was keeping your matter and antimatter from recombining at first was overcome by the pushing from your grampa, and eventually the pulling that your matter exerted when your antimatter got close enough to your space-time crack. Are you with me so far?” She was hoping to intimidate me, to make me give up trying to understand and just give in and do what she said. Too bad for her.

  “Sure. I loved free body diagrams in physics,” I reported.

  She groaned.

  “All of this is supposed to help me figure out what happened to Grampa, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Continue then, professor.”

  She was not amused.

  “You were a smart guy on Earth. This one is easy, but I’ll help a little more. Imagine you are back in your body, alive, and you act as a single object applying a pushing force. You are pushing a huge boulder to the edge of a cliff in the Grand Canyon. You are pushing with all your strength. It is almost impossible, but you are gradually inching the massive rock to the edge. Can you see this picture? Can you feel it?”

  “Yes. Okay, that’s what it was like for Grampa’s antimatter to push mine down. Almost impossible, but he used all of his strength and got it close to the edge. I suppose the edge here is the space-time crack?”

  “Good. Now back to the hunk of rock. Suppose you aren’t all alone in your effort to move the rock. Somehow your friends have tied a long, strong rope to it, without your knowledge, and as the rock gets closer to the edge of the cliff, they pull with an instantaneous surprising force. What will the rock do?”

  “It’ll continue moving but without needing me pushing anymore.”

  “So what will happen to you?”

  “Oh, right. Inertia! I will continue to move with my momentum. Is that what happened to Grampa? He went through my space-time crack, too?”

  “Yes, Ed. The force he felt at the last instant was about as strong as a smallish black hole. Even if he wasn’t already pushing, he would have been sucked into it just because he was so close to the edge.”

  “Did he know this would happen? Where is he now?”

  “We think he knew. We all know in some part of our consciousness what will happen if space-time cracks are not treated with reverence and distance. Where is he now? You can figure this out.”

  “Did he come with me? Back into my matter?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the whole story. Remember where you were when you were six and died?”

  “In the hospital. In the pediatric oncology ward.”

  “There were lots of sick kids there, remember? Many of them were hovering on the edge of life and death. Right on the edges of their own space-time gaps. Some of their antimatter was barely clinging to their bodies. Imagine it like a soul hovering above the body, unsure which force to respond to when, whack! A mess of antimatter comes out of nowhere and smacks them down.”

  “So Grampa made more kids live besides me?”

  “Seven sick kids recovered in a miraculous way, according to their doctors, after that night.”

  “And Grampa is in all of them, isn’t he? He got ripped apart.”

  “He sacrificed his death for your life.”

  “Will he ever be whole again?”

  “Only after all of those kids, and all of their offspring and grandchildren die. It takes about three generations for the majority of the antimatter to reunite.”

  Grampa gave up the peace and quiet of the universe to make me keep on living. Why was he being punished for this?

  Lizzie responded to my thoughts. “Don’t think of it as punishment. He knew what he was doing and what the consequences would be. Your grampa saw the future with you in it and made sure it happened. You might have made the decision on your own, if he gave you time to think about it, but he didn’t let you take that path. He intervened, reasoning that a three-generation deficit was mathematically negligible in the scope of the eternity he would eventually enjoy on the dead side. Though small, the ripple of his illicit intervention was significant enough to interrupt the equilibrium.”

  “Is that why I remember about being dead and coming back? Most people seem to have no idea about any of this.”

  Lizzie answered kindly, “Don’t worry. It isn’t possible to remember everything that happens on the dead side when you return. But the pain and isolation in your life, so far and in your future, will most certainly be caused by your unnatural knowledge of death. A much more peaceful existence is experienced by all who live in awe of the mysteries and power of the universe. Your grampa’s interference prevented you from reentering naturally, which would have allowed you a memory-free journey.”

  I thought about all the times when the carefree attitudes of my peers baffled me.

  In high school, I was not popular. I was the nerd. The geek. The loser. I enjoyed learning and easily earned high grades. I was envied and ridiculed for my intelligence and curiosity.

  Even in my teens, I worried about everything—human population, global warming, greenhouse gases, humanity causing the extinction of so many species. All manner of inconsequential living annoyed me. I always suspected there was some unfinished business I needed to attend to, some higher purpose for my life. I searched and searched through my teens, in high school and college, always confronted with frivo
lous living, unappreciative use of the atoms of life, and the blatant waste of infinite quantities of staggeringly amazing brain cells. I didn’t fit in with normal humans. Now it seemed I might be able to blame my isolation on my blasted, unhinged, swinging door space-time crack.

  I wasn’t ready to go back. I wanted to sniff around for a while longer on the dead side. Lizzie was hesitant to let me roam, knowing I wouldn’t forget all that I learned in death when I returned to life. But Lizzie said it herself: as my guide she was powerless to influence my decision.

  I thought hard and decided to investigate my own future for clues. I wanted to find out whether my life would ever get any better.

  45

  Old Man Eddie’s Life

  There’s a little boy eating Oreos under his bed. He has blankets and pillows arranged like a nest. Lying on his back, he pops a whole Oreo into his mouth and closes his eyes while he chews. From far away he hears someone calling, “Joey!” He stays as still as a stone except for his crunching.

  Who is this kid? He’s not me, and I don’t remember him from my life. He pulls an electronic gadget from under his pillow and starts to mash some buttons. I haven’t ever seen anything like this thing so I watch for a while. I find I can park on the pillow beside him and look up at the game. It’s dark under the bed and the gadget spills a green glow onto his face.

  How did I get here?

  The kid reaches his hand into his Oreo bag and comes up empty. With a shrug he kicks the bag out from under the bed, spraying brown crumbs onto the rug, and turns back to his game. He plays for a long time and suddenly falls asleep. The game lands with a thud on his chest. After a few minutes it seems to turn itself off. While he sleeps, I’ll look around this place and try to understand where it is.

  Out in the hallway, there’s a girl about my age holding a giant mug of coffee and a pile of books on her lap. She sits in a rocking chair and stares into space. There’s some noise from downstairs. I go to investigate.