The parallel universe schtick is the only consistent alternative to nonexistence, and nonexistence terrifies them.
It empowers me.
I can shape reality, just by looking at it. Anyone can. Or I can avert my eyes, respect its privacy, leave it unseen and totipotent.
The thought makes me a little giddy. I can almost forget how far I'm slipping behind, how much I need Janet's hand to guide me, because down here in the real world it doesn't have to matter.
Nothing is irrevocable until observed.
***
She buzzes me through on the first ring. The elevator's acting strangely today; it opens halfway, closes, opens again like an eager mouth. I take the stairs.
The door opens while I'm raising my hand to knock. She stands completely till.
"He came back," she says.
No. Even these days, the odds are just too—
"He was right there. He did it again." Her voice is completely expressionless. She locks the door, leads me down the shadowy hallway.
"He got in? How? Where did he—"
Gray light spills into her living room. We're up against the wall, off to one side of her window. I look around the edge of the curtain, down at the deserted street.
She points outside. "He was right there, he did it again, he did it again—"
To someone else. That's what she means.
Oh.
"She was so stupid," Janet's fingers grip the threadbare curtain, clenching, unclenching. "She was out there all alone. Stupid bitch. Should have seen it coming."
"When did it happen?"
"I don't know. A couple of hours."
"Did anyone—" I ask, because of course I can't say Did you—
"No. I don't think anybody else even saw it." She releases the curtain. "She got off easy, all things considered. She walked away."
I don't ask whether the phone lines were up. I don't ask if Janet tried to help, if she shouted or threw something or even let the woman inside afterwards. Janet's not stupid.
A distant mirage sparkles in the deepening twilight: the campus.
There's another oasis, a bit nearer, over by False Creek, and the edge of a third if I crane my neck. Everything else is grey or black or flickering orange.
Gangrene covers the body. Just a few remnant tissues still alive.
"You're sure it was the same guy?" I wonder.
"Who the fuck cares!" she screams. She catches herself, turns away. Her fists ball up at her sides.
Finally, she turns back to look at me.
"Yes it was," she says in a tight voice. "I'm sure."
I never know what I'm supposed to do.
I know what I'm supposed to feel, though. My heart should go out to her, to anyone so randomly brutalized. This much should be automatic, unthinking. Suddenly I can see her face, really see it, a fragile mask of control teetering on the edge of meltdown; and so much more behind, held barely in check. I've never seen her look like this before, even the day it happened to her. Maybe I just didn't notice. I wait for it to affect me, to fill me with love or sympathy or even pity. She needs something from me. She's my friend. At least that's what I call her. I look for something, anything, that would make me less of a liar. I go down as deep as I can, and find nothing but my own passionate curiosity.
"What do you want me to do?" I ask. I can barely hear my own voice
Something changes in her face. "Nothing. Nothing, Keith. This is something I've got to work through on my own, you know?"
I shift my weight and try to figure out whether she means it.
"I could stay here for a few days," I say at last. "If you want."
"Sure." She looks out the window, her face more distant than ever. "Whatever you like."
***
"They lost Mars!" he wails, grabbing me by the shoulders.
I know the face; he's about three doors down the hall. But I can't remember the name, it's... wait, Chris, Chris something... Fletcher. That's it.
"All the Viking data," he's saying, "from the 70's, you know, NASA said they had it archived, they said I could have it no problem, I planned my whole fucking thesis around it!"
"It got lost?" It figures; data files everywhere are corrupting in record numbers these days.
"No, they know exactly where it is. I can go down and pick it up any time I want," Fletcher says bitterly.
"So what's—"
"It's all on these big magnetic disks—"
"Magnetic?"
"—and of course magmedia have been obsolete for fucking decades, and when NASA upgraded their equipment they somehow missed the Viking data." He pounds the wall, emits a hysterical little giggle. "So they've got all this data that nobody can access. There probably isn't a computer stodgy enough anywhere on the continent."
I tell Janet about it afterwards. I expect her to shake her head and make commiserating noises, that's too bad or what an awful thing to happen. But she doesn't even look away from the window.
She just nods, and says, "Loss of information. Like what happened to me."
I look outside. No stars visible, of course. Just sullen amber reflections on the bottom of the clouds.
"I can't even remember being raped," she remarks. "Funny, you'd think it would be one of those things that stick in your mind. And I know it happened, I can remember the context and the aftermath and I can piece the story together, but I've lost the actual... event..."
From behind, I can see the curve of her cheek and the edge of a smile. I haven't seen Janet smile in a long time. It seems like years.
"Can you prove that the earth revolves around the sun?" she asks. "Can you prove it's not the other way around?"
"What?" I circle to her left, a wary orbit. Her face comes into view, smooth and almost unmarked by now, like a mask.
"You can't, can you? If you ever could. It's been erased. Or maybe it's just lost. We've all forgotten so much..."
She's so calm. I've never seen her so calm. It's almost frightening.
"You know, I'll bet after a while we forget things as fast as we learn them," she remarks. "I bet that's always the way i's been."
"Why do you say that?" I keep my voice carefully neutral.
"You can't store everything, there's not enough room. How can you take in the new without writing over the old?"
"Come on, Jan." I try for a light touch: "Our brains are running out of disk space?"
"Why not? We're finite."
Jesus, she's serious.
"Not that finite. We don't even know what most of the brain does, yet."
"Maybe it doesn't do anything. Maybe it's like our DNA, maybe most of it's junk. You remember back when they found—"
"I remember." I don't want to hear what they found, because I've been trying to forget it for years. They found perfectly healthy people with almost no brain tissue. They found people living among us, heads full of spinal fluid, making do with a thin lining of nerve cells where their brains should be. They found people growing up to be engineers and schoolteachers before discovering that they should have been vegetables instead.
They never found any answers. God knows they looked hard enough. I heard they were making some progress, though, before—