The Switch

by Hill, A. W.

  We were coming back around. We’d made some kind of circuit. I could feel it in the non-body falling upward with me. And now, if things didn’t go wrong, I’d be home. I understood that they could go wrong. I understood better some of the things Mr. Bohm had tried to teach us about probability when I was distracted and thinking about gaming. Stuff didn’t just happen randomly. It seemed random because we couldn’t predict it, but there were patterns, like ripples on a pond, or the ripples of Youseff’s karma idea. And sometimes those ripples intersected, maybe because there was, after all, just one big pattern. That pattern might even have a sort of memory, like a rubber band remembering its shape. If there was memory, there could also be purpose,.

  I know. It’s deep as hell. Or maybe not. The pigeon always flies home.

  And then, with a rush of air and a blast of light, I was there, and I stumbled backward and kept stumbling until I fell on my butt on the asphalt of the playground, inside the baseball diamond. The day was fresh and springlike, and there was a breeze off Lake Michigan. The sound in my ears was the sound of Chicago I knew. But I didn’t see my friends. I had fallen against the backstop, and I was alone.

  The panic that spread over me wasn’t only fear that they might not have made it, or might have wound up somewhere else. It was deeper: I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to this world without them. In some ways, they were more my world than this was. They were my connection to something that didn’t change.

  I called out. “Mose! Jemma! Connor! Where the hell are you?”

  And here, my story splits, because I know things now that I couldn’t know then, and I want to tell this as I experienced it, and not as I now understand it. When I’m done, you can draw your own conclusions. Anyhow, somewhere nearby Mose say, “Damn, Jake. You don’t have to shout,” and there they all were, sitting against the backstop on that warm spring day in Chicago.

  “How long have we been here?” Connor asked.

  “Feels like a while,” Jemma said.

  “Feels like we’re just hangin’,” said Mose. “Like this is what we do in this world. Like this is our spot.”

  I slapped my thigh. “Man, you are exactly right. In this world, we might’ve been sitting here before we got here. I mean—”

  “Dude,” said Connor. “I can tell already this is going to get trippy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But if what Gordon and everybody told us was right, in a little while, we’re not going to know how trippy. We’ll just be here, as if we’ve been here all along. I don’t know if that happens in minutes or hours, so while we still can remember, let’s backtrack for a minute, okay?” I looked around. “Damn. I wish I had something to write with.”

  Mose pointed to my pocket. “Still got that magic smartphone? That for sure has a voice recorder built in.”

  I retrieved the phone from my pocket, and of course, he was right. But what really struck me was the fact that we’d actually brought something back with us. Something physical. This was evidence. Of course, to anyone else, it would look like a phone, not an interworld transporter.

  “I’d like to get some of it down,” said Jemma. “Because this place is already starting to look familiar to me. I’m already forgetting.”

  “It should look familiar, Jemma,” said Connor. “This is where you live.”

  “It is funny,” she shook her head, “that for the first time, it feels right to be called Jemma.”

  “Remind me,” I said, “what you were called in the beehive city?”

  She crinkled her brow. “I don’t remember.”

  “Shit,” I said. “It’s already happening. We’re losing it. I don’t want to lose it.” I started throwing out questions.

  “Mose…where did we leave Gordon?”

  “The Mapmaker,” he answered.

  “Good. Connor, what was the stuff you were drinking on the island?”

  “Juice. Blue juice. But I have no idea what is was made of.”

  “Some kind of big ass psychedelic berries,” said Mose. “And maybe people ground up in that giant juicer.”

  “Jemma, what happened to Hartūn? Or, the kid I called Hartūn. The one from the beehives who gave me the Game Boy.”

  She looked down. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was trying to remember, or because she remembered too much.

  “He went back,” she finally said.

  “Back where?”

  “They took him back. To the workhouses. The Gatekeepers did.”

  “The Gatekeepers?” I asked. “That’s what those shadow things were?”

  Mose suddenly shuddered. “Man, I just got a shock up and down my spine remembering that. That was the worst of it, don’t you think?”

  Jemma and I nodded, but Connor said, “I dunno about that. I wasn’t there. But the worst of it for me was where we just came from. Because it was so close to real. I feel like I’m gonna turn on the TV and see those bastards.”

  “So close to real,” I repeated. “That means something. That’s some kind of clue. Like that when you’re traveling, and you get closer to an intersection with your own worldline, things start to seem real again. But the other stuff is just as real. It has to be.”

  “You know what that means, right?” asked Mose. “It means that even the weirdest sci-fi stuff we can dream up is possible somewhere.”

  “And that makes sense,” I said. “Because if it wasn’t possible, how could we imagine it?”

  “Oh man.” Connor face-palmed. “Just stop.”

  But we didn’t. We kept going like that for maybe two hours, until the sun told us that it was late in the afternoon, and we started to feel the coolness of Chicago spring nights. But we got most of the big pieces down, and when you have the big pieces, you can dig out the little pieces. I know that’s true, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tell this story. Those two hours of recording, with our voices still full of the color of the experiences we’d had, were what took me back into the “second sphere” that Youseff had said was where he floated, and made it more than some fast-fading dream. It wasn’t evidence that anyone else would accept, but it allowed me to keep one toe dipped into the multiverse. I’ve learned since then that in ancient times, before writing was invented, the wisest people developed these amazing tools for remembering, such as connecting a story you’d been told to a word or a song or even a room in your house, so that every time you heard that word, or song, or passed that room, you remembered. And that was how the oldest stories of the human race had been passed on until the time they could be written. One day, I’ll forget. But that’s okay because it’s written now.

  “So Jake,” Mose said after a long silence. “What’s our next move? This is your home world, right?”

  I laughed, but that was just to hide my nervousness. “You had to ask me, Mose? Hey, its Connor’s world, too.”

  “Yeah,” said Connor. “But I didn’t get to hang with the avatar of the multiverse like you did.”

  “Gordon,” I sighed. I thought for a second. “What would Gordon do?”

  “Well,” said Jemma. “We can’t stay out here all night.”

  “Nope,” Mose agreed. “And we don’t have any money, so it’s not like we can go chill at Father and Sons Pizza on North Avenue.”

  “Sooner or later—” Connor began.

  “We have to go home,” I finished. “Okay. I’ve got a plan. I don’t know if it’s a good plan, but it’s a plan. Gordon told me that when I got home, I’d have to ‘merge’ back into my old life. He also said there might be some glitches. I don’t know what I’m gonna find when I walk back into my house, but I volunteer to go first and then come back and report to you.”

  “What do you think he meant by ‘glitches?’” Connor asked.

  “I don’t know exactly, but look at it this way. This world kept going while Connor and I were gone. It’s not like we were reported missing or anything.”

  “You mean—” Connor swallowed hard. “I’ve been here all along?”
/>   “If I understand this right, yeah. And now, in a certain way, it’s like you never left. Except that there’s two of you. Sort of. Until there’s just one. Except that there won’t ever be just one.”

  “Jacobus,” Connor said through clenched teeth. “I am gonna strangle you if you keep it up.”

  “Just thinking out loud, Connor. Tryin’ to figure this all out so I can tell the story one day.”

  “What about me and Jemma? It’s a little different for us.” Mose cracked a nervous smile and added, “Jerrold.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that.” I looked at Jemma tenderly. I think she was just beginning to realize what was ahead of her. “Okay, try to follow me. First…Mose, when I met you as Jerrold, I was older than myself. Uh, I mean…I’d been born earlier than Jacobus, and Jacobus had never been born. It was 2008, remember?”

  “That’s right,” said Mose.

  “It’s 2014 now. If we’ve hit the right place. So, if Moses DeWitt was born in this world, but in the same year, he’s going to be six years older.” Mose just stared at me slack-jawed, and Connor groaned.

  “So what am I gonna do, Jake?” Mose said. “Slowly morph into some twenty-two-year-old? Like my arms and legs get longer and the whiskers pop out on my chin? That’s too damn weird.”

  I noticed that Jemma was shaking her head, at first slowly, then emphatically.

  “No,” she said. “That can’t be right. If Mose is here…now, the way he looks right now…it means that the other Mose—the one who would be twenty-two—isn’t. It means that this Mose—our Mose—already has a life here. So do I. We just don’t know what it is yet. So when we step into those lives, it’ll be more like when you were Jerrold. We’ll just have…a few more things to get used to.”

  She was good. I felt myself nodding. “You’re right, Jemma. That makes more sense. And I just remembered two things. Gordon said, ‘Your parents can only be your parents,’ meaning that somehow, the same people who were your parents in the beehive city are your parents here.”

  “I never knew them,” she said sadly. “We were separated when I was little. Too little to remember.”

  “Then I guess you have a big reunion coming up,” said Connor.

  “What’s the second thing?” she asked.

  “The second thing is that…you know your way home. That’s what happened to me when I was Jerrold. At first I was freaked, thinking…where do I live? How do I get there? And then, like some kind of radar or homing instinct—”

  “Like a pigeon,” Mose said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Like a pigeon. You just wind up at your door and you walk into your life.”

  “I have no idea where that would be,” Jemma said. “At least, not yet.” I wanted in the worst way to give her a hug of reassurance.

  “You will.” I took her hand and stood up, pulling Jemma with me. Then I looked at each one of my friends. “Do you guys understand what we just pulled off? Before it all fades away, think about where we’ve been…and what Youseff did for us. I mean, a guy died to get us home.”

  Mose was the first one to sniffle. Then it got me. Pretty soon we were all standing there at home plate, crying and holding onto one another just like we had in the Syrian desert. It was shock and relief all mixed into one. When we had dried our eyes and wiped our noses, I suddenly looked over at Jemma.

  “Hey,” I said. “You told me, out there in the desert, that you knew why it worked for us to hold onto each other when we were making a switch. Why we stayed together. You said you’d tell me when we got home.”

  “Oh boy.” She sighed. “I did know. Let me see if I can get it back.” She scrunched up her mouth and concentrated. “Okay, here goes: because we’re separate people. Physically, I mean. But we’re not…really.”

  Connor said, “That sounds like what my English teacher called a paradox.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “And the stuff that connects us can flow, like electricity. But it needs a—”

  “A conductor,” I said.

  “Right,” Jemma agreed. “And the conductor is our bodies.”

  We stayed in the huddle for a minute longer, and I gave them my plan.

  “There’s an Orange Julius place on Lincoln, right near the school. I know the guy who runs it. He likes me. I’ve come in there lots of times without money, and he knows I’m always good for it. We’ll go there, and then I’ll go home. And I swear on all that’s holy that I’ll be back in no more than an hour. Then we’ll decide on the next move.”

  “Solid.” Mose stood up and brushed the dust from his pants. “Let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” said Connor, joining us. “All for one and one for all. But I sure wish I had some of that blue juice right about now.”

  “Your gonna have something just as good,” I said. “A Julius.”

  heard the TV before I got to the door. There was laughter, like on a game show or one of those comedies with canned laughs. So that you can understand what happened next, I should remind you that our apartment—it was actually a condominium—was on the first floor of a building that seventy-five years ago had been a Catholic girls’ school. The hallways leading from the lobby were hung with old black and white photographs of the school, the teachers, and the girls. I had glanced at them every time I passed, never paying much attention except to one photo: a class picture of fifteen or twenty girls my age, most of them with hair in a style that my mom said was called a “permanent wave.” Basically, lots of curls.

  I remembered that in the center of that photo, looking right into the camera, was a girl who would’ve been special in any period of history.

  I lifted my fist to knock on our door, but stopped myself just in time. What was I thinking? I live here. Instinctively, I reached into the pocket of my jeans, and sure enough, the house key was there, just as it had been on the day Connor and I had left this world. That little detail was in some ways the strangest thing yet. When I put it into the lock, my hand trembled. I took a deep breath and turned my head away from the door for a few seconds to get my nerve back.

  Two girls carrying books crossed the lobby, giggling over some private joke. One of them, vaguely familiar, looked at me and smiled, and I gave her a weak smile in exchange, thinking she must be a neighbor I’d forgotten. Then I looked again, just as they were going out the front doors. Their hair was curly and pinned back on the sides, and they were wearing school uniforms. Gray jackets with plaid skirts and white knee socks. They carried their books not in backpacks but held against their chests. Sweat prickled my neck. I turned and shook the image away, and when I looked back, they were gone.

  I’m willing to swear that the girl who smiled at me was the one from the photograph. I don’t know whom I’d swear it to who wouldn’t want to lock me away.

  Out in the courtyard, I heard the bird with that strange, haunting call—the one that used to wake me so gently in the mornings. After my heart slowed, a momentary calm washed over me. I was going to have to get used to some new things. Time was no longer just an arrow, and space contained more worlds than could be imagined. They were curled up within the tiny grains of reality we moved through every day. When we moved, we moved through worlds and time.

  I turned the key and gave the door a soft push.

  “Oh,” said my mother from the sofa, a little startled. “Jacobus. I didn’t realize you’d gone out, honey.”

  Thank God she hadn’t called me dumpling.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  I found myself rooted to the entryway. I must have looked kind of tranced-out, because she said, “Are you okay, honey?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I was just…playing some ball with Connor over at the playground. You know…Connor…my best friend.” I waited.

  “Yes, honey.” She eyed me. “Of course I know Connor.”

  That was a relief.

  “I’m gonna meet him for a Julius…after I finish my homework.”

  “It’s Friday,” she said. “Since when do you do homework on a
Friday night?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s, uh, a science project…sort of thing. I’m doing it with Connor. That’s what we’re gonna talk about at the Orange Julius place. You know, the science project.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, with that knowing mom-tone in her voice. “A science project sort of thing… Is that what you call girls these days?”

  I stepped in a little farther. In a way, she’d just given me an out, so I smiled bashfully and played the part of the busted teenager.

  “Do we have anything to eat?” I asked. “I got kinda hungry.”

  “I just got back from the store,” she said. “But don’t spoil your appetite. Dinner’s at 7. Your dad is out getting charcoal for the barbecue. And don’t forget to take your medicine.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Great. No. I won’t. Spoil my appetite.”

  I didn’t ask about the medicine, though I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d never taken more than kid antibiotics and aspirin.

  Her stare followed me all the way into the kitchen. I leaned into the counter and gasped a lungful of air. With the caution of a bomb demolitions expert, I opened the cupboard. If there were fish-flavored rice cakes in there, I knew my legs might give out.

  Oreos. Beautiful, non-nutritious Oreos. With double filling.

  I was home.

  I stacked up eight of them and wolfed them down with cold milk. When traveling, we hadn’t thought that much about food, maybe because we weren’t really gone all that long in this world’s time. But now that I was here, I was famished. I would have kept eating, except that then my mom would undoubtedly have come in. In fact, it occurred to me that I should leave the kitchen and head up to my room. I wasn’t ready for conversation yet.

  I tried to be natural, but I must have had my shoulders hunched or my head down, because once again, her eyes followed me across the room. I shivered with relief when I’d finally gotten to the stairs. My bathroom—the one I always used—was at the top of the landing. The door was cracked and the light was on, the way I always left it and got yelled at for. I turned and looked into my room. The bed was a mess, but what did I expect? I’d been sleeping in it. I can’t even begin to explain how strange it is to be standing in your own room, separated from your own self. I scanned the shelves. No baseball trophies. My Green Day poster on the wall. More confirmation I was in the right place. I suddenly needed to pee. I went out and pushed open the bathroom door.