Obscura Burning

by van Rooyen, Suzanne

  “That I could die?”

  “That too.”

  “Why’s Obscura even here, and where did it come from?” I feel better not talking about my imminent demise, even if I’m not alone. There might be other people seesawing between lives, but none of them could have it any shittier than me.

  “That is the real mystery.” There’s a glint in Prof. Cruz’s eye that makes me squirm. He’s enjoying this. Mya’s foot brushes mine under the table. She rubs her toes against my ankle and my leg stops bouncing.

  “We never saw her coming. One day the solar system was perfectly normal; the next day Obscura appeared. She was just there, creeping up to Mars.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s not. It shouldn’t be unless we have in fact already shifted into an alternate reality in which Obscura is a permanent neighbor.” Prof taps away at the computer.

  “You mean, the whole Earth shifted?” Mya asks. “Like we’re all living in some weird altered dimension right now?”

  “Possibly. No way of really knowing.” He turns the screen to us once more. “I predicted such an event, that a celestial anomaly could bring about the end of the world as we know it.”

  There’s a star chart mapping our solar system. Obscura’s depicted in bright blue.

  “So you’re saying we’re all gonna die?” Mya folds her arms. “Just like those doomsday nut jobs?”

  “Impossible to say really. The Mayans believed that twenty-twelve would mark the end of the fourth Age and the start of the fifth thanks to some mysterious, cosmic egg. I choose to interpret that as a celestial body.”

  “Obscura,” I say.

  “Exactly, my boy.” Cruz taps the planet on the screen. A quick glance around the kitchen doesn’t reveal stacks of canned food or bottled water. Maybe he’s got an underground bunker and a weapons stockpile in his backyard.

  “So what happens in the switch over between fourth and fifth worlds? The Earth gets wiped out of existence?” Mya’s not looking terribly impressed.

  “No one knows for sure. According to some Mayan legend, the end of the Fourth Age would be a time of purification; whether that’s the annihilation of the entire human race or simply a cleansing, we have no way of knowing. Either way, things will change. We are standing on the precipice.” He’s way too excited by all of this.

  “You sound like those guys with their damn the end is nigh leaflets.” My optimism drains away. This guy doesn’t know any more than we do. All just speculation and conjecture with fancy physics terms.

  Prof. Cruz laughs. “I’m simply explaining an interpretation of science as identified by an ancient culture, who couldn’t articulate what they understood about the universe in a language we find scientifically acceptable today.”

  “But why am I shifting?” I sip my Coke. “Why me?”

  He shrugs, a movement that causes his whole torso to wobble beneath his checkered cowboy shirt.

  “Perhaps you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place at the perfect time.”

  “You’re being cryptic.” Mya huffs.

  “It’s not as if we have documented cases of time travel and inter-universe touring at our disposal. Anecdotal evidence from biased sources is all we have.” His gaze falls on me. That same glint that makes me feel uncomfortable. “This is rather remarkable, Kyle. You have been blessed with a rare opportunity.”

  “Blessed? I shift at random between two realities that aren’t exactly terrific, and all I get for my troubles are nosebleeds and headaches. I just want it to stop.” I’m tired, so tired of being two people, of leading separate lives. Of not remembering the bits of life I’m apparently leading even when I’m not around.

  “This is likely due to an error in chirality. The nosebleeds, et cetera. That may also be a side effect of the entanglement as your consciousness degrades.”

  “Whoa, back up. Chi-what?” Mya puts her elbows on the table, leaning forward and looking curious.

  “Chirality is a theory of mirror images being nonidentical. This is an additional problem in Kyle’s case.” He opens up another web page filled with equations and mathematics that go right over my head.

  “You mean these two parallel lives are meant to be mirror images of each other?” My head hurts, and massaging my temples isn’t helping one bit.

  “Obscura’s interference seems to have allowed Kyle, and a few others, to operate within two different dimensions at least at a conscious level, if not physical due to the entanglement. These dimensions, alternate universes, are chiral. That is, they’re nonidentical. They separated from each other at the time of the rift, when Obscura appeared. Her appearance likely coincided with the exact moment Kyle made the decision not to be with Danny.”

  “Lucky me.” I lean my forehead on my forearms, closing my eyes as the burning band around my head tightens its grip.

  “And this consciousness degradation bit?” Mya asks.

  “Every switch between realities would essentially destroy part of Kyle’s consciousness. Hence, the very real possibility of death by quantum entanglement.” Professor Cruz gives me an apologetic look. I’m tallying up the number of shifts, trying to work out exactly how much of myself got lost thanks to quantum physics.

  “So how do we fix it?” Mya’s voice is strained.

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” The prof drums his fingers on the table.

  “What about this syzygy; could that be having an effect?”

  I’m listening even though their voices grate in my ears. Mya’s is shrill, a screwdriver spiraling holes through my brain.

  “The syzygy definitely exacerbates the effects. The syzygy is at its most perfect on Wednesday, when Obscura is closest to Earth. After that, the planet’s orbit takes us out of the straight line.” Cruz plays an animation of the various planets’ orbits, illustrating the formation of the syzygy and it breaking apart.

  “That could be a good thing, right?”

  “Or catastrophic. The window is fairly narrow, an hour or two only, during which time the syzygy remains perfect.”

  “Window for what?” I ask.

  “Hard to say, but that’s when the parallel realities will be at their most flexible. Their most malleable.”

  “You mean, Kyle could control the shifting?” Mya sucks her bottom lip contemplatively.

  “I think that if there is any time in which Kyle may be able to influence what’s happening to him, Fourth of July, as the hour approaches…” He pauses, running the animation again and then opening up a list of numbers that make me squinty-eyed. “Eleven p.m. No later than midnight.”

  “Midnight, Mountain Time?” Mya looks incredulous. “How very poetic.”

  “Just the way it works.” Cruz shows us the time frames. Science doesn’t lie.

  “So I have to stop the world from ending before midnight on the Fourth of July?”

  “Or risk the possibility of being stuck in one reality or the other, without the ability to shift between them.”

  “And I’m supposed to choose one?” The sound of my own voice makes my head feel like it’s splitting open, my brain being wrenched from the confines of my skull. It takes me a moment to realize I’m screaming as the blue marble of the kitchen swirls into darkness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shira’s dead

  Hospitals at night are the loneliest places. The sick and suffering hoping they’ll make it through the darkness to see the light of another day. Others hoping that this night’ll be their last. And then there’s me who’s stuck in the wrong reality, hoping the world does end, preferably before they start the electroshock therapy, before I have to choose between Danny and Shira. This is the worst kind of nightmare and there’s no waking up from it.

  Just me and my machines beeping away the hours. Mom probably had to go to work. Or maybe she’s meeting her secret lover at the seedy motel. For once, I wish I could see my dad.

  Danny’s probably at home with his fami
ly, praying for my recovery. Shouldn’t disturb them with a phone call.

  I’m strapped down again, wrists and ankles. Leather straps, but when I tug on my bonds it sounds like clinking chain.

  Chain. Handcuffs and chains on my wrists and feet. The passing sensation of being somewhere else. Being someone else.

  I blink and I’m back to leather straps in a hospital bed. The shift happened so fast I think I might actually have whiplash.

  According to the clock on the wall, with glowy strips on its hands, it’s almost 4 a.m. Tuesday morning maybe, though I can’t be sure.

  I need to pee, desperately. It only takes two yells to bring a nurse running.

  She offers me a bedpan. I insist on using the can. The nurse is young with wide, nervous eyes. She probably doesn’t want to have to handle my junk any more than I want to suffer the indignity of trying to pee lying down.

  “I’m not going to run, I promise.” I give her a big, beaming smile. She nods and helps me out of bed. The IV trolley thing follows me, connected to my arm by a dripping tube. The nurse seems relieved when I close the bathroom door behind me.

  Perched on the porcelain, I run my hands over my face. I’ve made a total mess of this situation. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.

  Cold water feels good on my cheeks and eyelids, washing away the grogginess from whatever they jabbed me with. Maybe they’ve got me on psychotropics already. Wonder if an overdose would kill me. I fiddle with the IV bag but I’m not sure how to up the dosage or what it would really achieve. Another attempted suicide, and they’ll lock me up for sure.

  In the mirror, the swelling around my eye is a little better, turning yellow now. The gash in my lip still aches and tastes of blood. My hair’s a tumbleweed tangle; might just shave it all off.

  Chirality, that’s what the prof called it; the mirror image not being identical. I stare at myself in the glass, concentrating harder than I think I ever have, trying to activate the quantum entanglement—if that’s even possible. My eyes burn as I stare at my reflection. The nurse knocks on the door but I ignore her, maintaining focus on the face in the mirror.

  After a while it doesn’t look like me anymore, he looks like a stranger, some beat-up kid totally confused and overwhelmed by his existence. Slowly, the skin sloughs off the other Kyle’s face, revealing glossy pink scars. The flesh puckers around his mouth and eye, so much uglier on the left side of his face.

  “Hello, Scarface.”

  Tentative fingers explore my own cheeks. Smooth skin except for a pimple or two and the bruised eye. No scars beneath my fingertips. I smile and the boy in the glass smiles as well, a lopsided grin that pulls his features into a grotesque rictus.

  More than one nurse bangs on the door now, demanding I open at once. I reach for that other Kyle. The surface ripples beneath my fingertips, tacky and warm, clinging to my fingers like bubble gum from a hot sidewalk, then flowing in viscous ribbons over my hand and up my arm.

  I’m burning. I try to shake off the goo and every droplet bursts into flame, engulfing me in fire. Kyle in the glass is laughing at me, shedding his scars as the flesh melts off my bones.

  The door bursts open behind me, and the flames rush hungrily toward the nurses. With bleeding hands, they reach for me, grab my arms, and pull me into the inferno.

  I try to scream, but my tongue turns to ashes and my throat smolders. Gulping down smoke and fire, I hurl myself out the door, past the nurses reduced to brittle skeletons. But I can’t get out, even though the door’s open. There’s an invisible barrier preventing my escape.

  A jab and sting in my thigh. The flames are extinguished, replaced by the cold rush of bathroom tiles as my knees collapse and I pitch forward into the nurse’s waiting arms.

  They drag me back to bed. I’m still conscious as they strap me down again.

  “He’s burning up,” a nurse says, her hand pressed to my forehead.

  “Should I get the doctor? Might be a reaction to the meds.” The young one, her voice strained with worry and maybe fear.

  “Could be pneumonia from his ribs. Stay with him; I’ll call Stevens.”

  I’m shivering, even though my hospital gown is soaked with sweat. The nurse tucks the blankets up over my chest and around my shoulders. She smooths the hair off my face.

  “You’re going to be just fine.” She strokes my hand.

  I want to tell her I’m dying, that the world’s going to end, but the drugs take effect and I slither sideways into darkness.

  * * *

  A cooling breeze, wind chimes tinkling in the distance. It’s nighttime and Shira’s humming a sweet little tune over Danny’s strummed guitar chords.

  I’m not wearing my watch so I have no idea what day it is. They smile at each other as Danny fumbles a chord and Shira sings off-key. We’re on easy chairs in a loose semicircle around the six-pack. The stars are out and Obscura blinks among them. So this is after April 6, but in a completely different reality. One without fire.

  Blood snakes out of my nose, a thin stream easily wiped away by the back of my hand. My lips are smooth. Surreptitiously, I explore my face with my fingers. No scars.

  “Hey,” I say, repeating it louder until they stop their song and turn to me. They seem so far away, although we’re barely two yards apart.

  “Hey, cielo. How you doing with that Corona?” Danny punctuates his sentence with a chord progression.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “I thought we were just going to hang. The three of us. You still wanna go out to Ghost Town?” Long dark hair swishes over Shira’s shoulders.

  “Nah, leave it.” I’m smiling.

  “Come here.” She beckons me forward.

  I comply, settling myself at Shira’s feet in the dust. She tugs her fingers through my hair, separating the strands into workable clumps as she begins the braids.

  Danny cracks open another beer. “Man, this sure feels good, don’t it?”

  “It sure does.” I lean into Shira’s hands. This is what we could’ve had. If I’d never had that fight with Danny, if I’d never gone to Shira’s afterward, if we’d never gone to that dumbass barn with a bottle of tequila and matches.

  “This is how it should be, just the three of us. Together, forever.” If I could just stay right where I am right now, everything would be OK.

  A dull ache throbs at the base of my spine, claws its way up to my head.

  “No, no.” Squinting, I turn toward Danny. There’s smoke curling off his shoulders. The smell of burning hair and flesh makes me want to gag. Shira’s whimpering as her fingers turn to ash. I leap toward Danny, but there’s a hand on my shoulder, holding me back, forcing me down in the dust.

  “Kyle… Kyle!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Danny’s dead

  Mya’s concerned face looks down at me. She grabs my arms and pulls me to my feet.

  “What happened?” I cough up Coke and blood on pristine tiles.

  “You fell off your chair,” she says. Prof. Cruz hands her paper towels, which she spreads across the floor, mopping up my mess. “You just fell back. I thought you were having a seizure or something.”

  “It happened again.” I bend down to help her.

  “What did?” Professor Potato asks, all wobbly chinned.

  “I shifted. How long was I out for?”

  “A minute maybe.”

  Mya fetches me a glass of water to wash down the sour taste between my teeth. I’ve puked more in the past forty-eight hours than I have in my entire life. The novelty is wearing off.

  Prof looks concerned, and waits for me to recover before saying anything. “Tell me about your experience.”

  And I do, mostly. I leave out the part about Shira and Danny both being alive in a third reality. Some things are just too personal.

  “Fascinating.” The prof strokes his chin. “Kyle, would you allow me to document these findings? You’d make an exceptional case study. Far more reliable than anonymous acc
ounts in some underground forum.”

  “Findings?” Mya sounds indignant.

  “I’m not a damn guinea pig.”

  “By documenting what you experience, I might have the chance to help you, and others who might be experiencing this event.”

  “Might be?” Always that dollop of doubt.

  “This is a scientific first. You must appreciate the significance of that.” His wrinkly jowls are turning puce.

  “What I’d appreciate is if this could stop before I cough up a lung.”

  “Yes, the physical exertions are a concern.” Prof has the decency to frown and look baffled. “But you’re young and healthy, with ample endurance.”

  My hands become fists of their own volition. I’m ready to turn the guy into Smash, but Mya takes my wrist, unfurling my fingers.

  “Do you know how we can stop this from happening to him? Stop him shifting?”

  “Before Wednesday?” Cruz shakes his head. “You have a marvelous opportunity here, son. You have the singular ability to experience multiple realities—”

  “I’m not some Peter Parker, and I don’t want to die like this.” I don’t want to be scarred or strapped down in the loony bin either. I want that night out on the rocks under the stars, with Shira’s hands in my hair and Danny strumming his guitar.

  “I can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard.” I’m on the verge of tears.

  Prof looks concerned. “This is a gift, Kyle. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell you something important.”

  “What?”

  “Only you can know that. Perhaps some soul-searching is in order.”

  Definitely a wack job.

  “The syzygy ends in two days.” I drag fingers through my hair.

  “And so might the world,” Mya adds. “That doesn’t give you much time to figure this out.”

  “Please, stay here. Let me help you, document your experience.” The prof lays his hands on the tabletop. “I can offer modest compensation. Perhaps more if I present these findings to my colleagues at Princeton. With research grants—”