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I order a meal from the front desk, fighting with my mask as I speak, trying to get it to stay on. For some reason, the straps over my ears keep slipping off. I think I must have stretched them too much earlier.
To be honest, I’m getting fed up wearing these things.
I apologise to the incredibly, almost annoyingly, polite and enthusiastic person at the front desk for my lack of pandemic etiquette, and she laughs.
“Are there any new guests today?” I ask, trying to make conversation.
“Actually, no, Mr Quinn. In fact, the other guests checked out this morning. You are the only person here tonight.”
I stand in the hallway and look around. I am standing in the heart of British government and imperialistic opulence. It’s a massive building. A glorious demonstration of how great Britain once was… perhaps maybe still is, but I don’t know enough about this world to know… and I am speechless. I can’t believe I’m here. I’m still convinced this is some incredible Candid Camera prank which has gone horribly wrong.
“Oh, Mr Quinn?” the woman behind the desk catches my attention, just as I turn towards the elevator. “You had a message. It’s from the Home Secretary. She asked if you could perhaps give her a call sometime when it was convenient for you?”
I nod and thank the woman, reading the name of her badge as I do.
“Thank you, Sofia.”
Her eyes beam back at me, and her face lights up even more.
As I step inside the elevator, I take the short ride up to my Penthouse, and laugh.
The Home Secretary just called and asked me to call her at my convenience?
Unbelievable.
Entering my suite, I toss the brown package onto the sofa in the lounge and immediately pour myself a glass of whisky from the bar. I walk across to the window and stare out across the Thames.
The sun is on the way down now. There is a bank of clouds on the horizon, and if they are still there in a few hours’ time, they will surely turn a glorious red.
Seeing a door leading to a balcony outside which I hadn’t noticed last night, I open it and step outside.
The air outside is warm.
Looking at my watch, I see my evening meal will not arrive for another twenty minutes, so I retrieve the package from the lounge and sit down at the table outside. I’m nervous.
Almost reluctant to open it.
But I know I must.
Before I do, I kill more time by going back into the lounge and collecting the bottle of whisky.
Then I sit down, rip open the top of the cardboard envelope.
And the nightmare begins.
--------------------
It’s a letter. Not too long. Written on thick white paper.
I recognise the handwriting.
It’s my own.
Taking a deep breath, and swallowing hard, I begin.
“Dear Me,”
You fucking bastard!”
Another deep breath. It’s a good, friendly beginning. Not. And it immediately sets the tone for what I worry will come next.
“Dear Me,
You fucking bastard!
You ruined my life. You destroyed my life. Who the hell do you think you are? Fucking who?
I had everything, EVERYTHING. And now I have nothing. And it’s all because of you.
What gives you the bloody right to take over my life? To take my wife and set her against me? To destroy my career? To trample all over everything I have created for the past twenty years? Who the HELL do you think you are?
You might look like me, you might think you are me, but you’re nothing like me.
You’re weak. Pathetic. A no one. A nobody.
What on earth is a Product Manager, anyway?
You think you got away with it, don’t you? But you’re wrong.
I met your wife, Sarah.
I fucked her.
I hurt her bad.
Then I left her. But not before I emptied our bank account and cut her off from everything. Now she’ll have to work for a living like everyone else.
I couldn’t stand her. Or your two brats, Keira and Nicole…
Spoilt. Spineless.
They wouldn’t survive a minute in the desert without their designer clothes and mobile phones.
Someone had to teach them a lesson, so I did!…”
My hands are shaking. And my heart is racing.
The words on the page swim before my eyes…
“You might think you’re smart, Mr Quinn, but I’m on to you. I know how this works.
You jump from your world into my body, and force me back into yours
Not once, but TWICE! First you force me from my world to yours. Then you jump back into your body and force me back to my world.
Because of you I spent a year in your fucking world, A YEAR! And then when I come back home, I find you’ve infected every part of my life. You FUCKED everything up.
So, I’m writing to warn you, and to tell you, just so you know, that if you ever do that again, and if you ever force me back into your pathetic life in your world, I will make your wife and children suffer. I will make it my personal mission to destroy them. And you.
So leave me alone, you bastard.
Live your life, not mine.
Me, JAMES QUINN.”
--------------------
I make it to the bathroom just in time to vomit into the toilet. I retch twice, then crumple onto the floor against the wall.
I’m scared.
Petrified.
Not for me, but for Sarah, and Keira, and Nicole.
The message that the other me had sent me was all too clear. If I ever forced him back to my world again, he’d go after my family.
I knew he meant it.
The other me is obviously a seriously bad and horrible man. Deranged. Dangerous. Evil.
And the worst thing of all is that I am currently in his world, now, which means that if I’m here, then he must be there. Back in my world for a second time.
Mad, angry, and with the sole mission of going after Sarah and my children!
And so long as I’m here, …
… I’m powerless to stop him doing whatever he wants to my family back home!
Chapter Thirty One
Worries
.
I read the letter three times.
Each time I read it, I can’t believe it.
Why is he so angry?
Did I really destroy his - my life? Am I really such a bastard? And if so, have I inadvertently destroyed my own by giving my other self so much cause to come after mine?
Or is the other me just a vindictive, horrible man that blames others for the unparalleled predicament that he - we - have found ourselves in?
I feel helpless. I’m here and he’s almost definitely there now, and there’s nothing I can do.
The letter proves that the other me has somehow met Sarah and my family. I squirm at the idea that he would have been in my house, with my wife, in my bed. That she and he may have made love.
I feel weirdly violated and worry about Sarah.
Has he really hurt her?
And if not yet, will he right now be looking for her and trying to follow through with his threat?
--------------------
Leaving the letter on the sofa, I walk out onto the balcony and take deep lungsful of fresh air.
I pace the patio back and forth.
I hear a doorbell ring and realise my food must have arrived.
Retrieving it from the hallway where it has been left, I quickly open the bottle of wine that came with it, and pour myself a large glass which I down in one.
Looking at the food, I don’t feel hungry, but as the smell hits my nostrils, my mouth waters, and I decide that eating may perhaps take my mind off everything for a while.
So I take it to my dining room table, arrange the plates of food on the table, and tuck in.
Unfortunately, the plan doesn’t work out as I
had hoped. I can’t stop thinking about the letter, about Sarah and my children, and after several mouthfuls I give up.
Instead, I find my ‘smart phone’… my mobile phone… I can’t get used to this new technology yet… and I call the Professor in Scotland.
As soon as I hear his voice I start to relax, maybe because of the calm I felt in the highlands when I visited him, surrounded by nothing but peace and tranquillity, or perhaps because I know he will understand what I’m going through and may even be able to help.
How, I don’t know. The reality is that perhaps no one can.
The Professor is genuinely pleased to hear from me.
“I’ve been calling you… if you look on the phone, you should see missed calls from me. How is everything?”
I tell him.
About Jane. About the letter. About what it says.
And then, after giving the Professor a few moments to fetch a pen and some paper and a glass of whisky, I read the letter to him again several times.
I’ve never heard the Professor swear before, but he does now. Twice.
“It seems like you are both a pair of Jekyll and Hydes. I certainly would not like to cross the other you, James my boy!”
That doesn’t help.
“I need to stop him! I need to get home!” I blurt out the blatantly obvious.
“I don’t think you can, James. At least, not yet. The time is not right.”
“How are your calculations? Do they tell you anything new about when the portal may open up? When I can go home?”
“I am sorry, James, but I have nothing new to tell you. I’ve haven’t had a chance to make any satisfactory conclusions about all the new data you’ve given me. Yet… But I will my boy. I will. It’s just a question of… time.”
He hesitates before saying the last word as he realises how silly it’s going to sound. But, actually, he has just hit the nail on the head.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning again.” The Professor says. “Put aside the emotions. We need to learn what the letter is telling us. It’s not just a letter. It’s a report from another person who has gone through the portal, and stepped from one world to another. Not just once, but twice.”
The Professor is right. As usual.
So, together, we start to reread the letter again between us, reading each line and trying to dissect what the words tell us. Trying to extract from them every speck of insight that they can impart.
Together we highlight six lines of importance; the rest are rants and raves, and contain violent threats which I need to think about later, but for now, the Professor encourages me to just think about the facts. Nothing else.
We write them down as statements, and then the facts that we get from them:
Statement 1: “What gives you the bloody right to take over my life?
, you might think you are me, but you’re nothing like me.
Fact 1: The other James, ‘James 2’, is nothing like me, ‘James 1’. James 2 recognises it, and has obviously concluded, from his interactions with others in my world, and through the way my life has been built in my other world, that he and I are very different people.
Statement 2: “I met your wife, Sarah.”
Fact 2: Somehow, even though James 2 had never met Sarah in his own time-line, in the history of his version of this world, somehow he had now met my wife in my world.
Statement 3: “I fucked her.”
Fact 3: This bit is very difficult. It could mean many things. The way he wrote it, the choice of verb,… he is obviously trying to hurt me. But it tells us that not only had he met Sarah, my wife and soulmate, but that somehow she had accepted him and that James 2 had slipped into my life, and to my bed… For how long that lasted, I don’t know, but obviously, in the same way Jane had thought I was James 2, maybe Sarah had then thought he was James 1… I mean, me.
Statement 4: “I know how this works.
Fact 4: James 2 has been thinking a lot about the mechanism of what’s been going on, and has come to some conclusions. Which is not unexpected. I’ve been doing exactly the same for the past year… nine years… But Fact 5 seems to show us that perhaps James 2 has managed to be a little more clever than we have.
Statement 5: “You jump from your world into my body, and force me back into yours.”
Fact 5: Very interesting. This sentence really excites the Professor. To him it describes a mechanism where an exchange seems to take place between one version of me and another. The word ‘force’ is peculiarly interesting to him. It seems to convey the notion that two of us can’t exist in the same place at the same time, so when one of us arrives in one world, the other is forced out. Forced to ‘jump’ from one place to another.
Statement 6: “Not once, but twice.”
Fact 6: When he wrote the letter to you, he had already made two jumps!
“This, James, my boy, is perhaps the most interesting nugget of information of all!” the Professor declares, his voice more excited than ever. “It tells us that at the time he wrote this letter, he had already gone over to your world, and then come back to his own. When was that?”
“As far as I can remember, it was sometime towards the end of 2013, from putting together the pieces of information that she had mentioned to me.”
“So, by that time he had made two jumps? And where is he now? Not here! Which means he has made a third jump already! And… And because you have not yet made the jump back to your own world, the big question is what triggered his jump from your world back to this one?
My mind is blank. I can see where the Professor is going with this, but I honestly don’t have any idea what the answers are.
The Professor then wants to move on, which brings us to Fact 7.
Statement 7: “And then when I come back home, I find you’ve infected every part of my life. I spent a year in your fucking world, A YEAR!”
Fact 7: James 2 seems to have spent the same amount of time in my world as I spent in his during 2012-2013…during my first jump.
Statement 8: “… if you ever do that again, and if you ever force me back into your pathetic life in your world…”
Facts 8 and 9: Two pieces of information together: First, at the time of writing, in 2013, James 2 seems to think that this is possibly not over for him. He’s worried about future jumps. Second fact: he seems to think that I am in control, that it’s me leading the jumps. That it’s me doing the ‘forcing’.
When we get to the end of the letter, the Professor asks for some time to himself to think, and to reread the words again so he can check that he hasn’t missed anything.
We agree to talk again in twenty minutes.
Which is good, because by the time I get to the end of the letter for the nth time with the Professor, I am very upset and need a moment to get some fresh air. The last words in the letter scare me, and I am shaking with nerves and fear, and anger, as I step out onto the balcony again, and stare at the incredible setting sun without seeing any of its beauty. The sky is an amazing, vivid red.
It’s almost as if the universe is warning me.
Red for danger.
A threat which hangs in the sky and doesn’t go away.
“... if you ever force me back into your pathetic life in your world, I will make your wife and children suffer. I will make it my personal mission to destroy them.”
Chapter Thirty Two
A map home.
.
“James, hold up your scar and show it to me.” The Professor insists as soon as the video call he arranges on the smart TV in my apartment connects with his.
“I can’t see it!” The Professor says.
“Neither can I,” I add. “It’s gone. Completely.”
“Very…”
“Interesting?” I interrupt him. “This is all well and good, Professor, but when can I go home? That bastard threatened to harm my family if I made him jump again, and he’s not here now, so I obviously made him jump somewhere else. The question
is where? Where the hell has he gone now? And WHY am I HERE, and not back home?”
“Good questions, my boy, and they’re all questions that we need to find answers to. But for now, there’s no point in getting worried and asking too many ‘What ifs?” about this and that, and things we don’t understand and possibly can’t influence. Yet…” The Professor replies, trying to calm me down. “But, James, you’re right. The most important question for now is probably, where has the other James gone, and what would that information tell us, if we knew.”
I nod, not able to say anything calmly. My heart is racing. And I’m pacing the room back and forth.
“Stand still!” the Professor eventually commands me, actually quite authoritatively. It surprises me. And I stop moving around.
“James, let’s try something. This is all getting quite complicated. Trying to follow and understand who’s doing what, or gone where, is difficult to imagine. So why don’t we try to map this out.”
The Professor turns to a white board that he has pulled in front of the TV at his end.
“Let’s jot down what we know…”
I watch as he seems to divide the board into two areas, and put a cross on either side at the bottom of the board. Beside the cross on the right he scribbles ‘W1’ and just beneath it ‘Married to Sarah’. Beside the cross on the left of the screen he writes ‘W2’ and beneath that, ‘Married to Jane’.
“We’re going to draw the timelines of you, James 1…which we will mark as J1… and the other you, James 2, which we will mark as J2.”
He then draws a horizontal red arrow across the bottom of the screen starting on the first cross on the right and then finishing on the cross on the left-hand side of the screen. Beside that arrow he scribbles the letters, Initial Jump J1.
“That, my boy, is the start of your timeline, marking your initial jump from your world to this one!”
Am I Dead? Page 21