Jim laughed sadly. He had noticed his own shadowy government tail following him a couple of days after getting out of hospital, an obvious warning from the government that they were watching him and his family. He was sure monitoring devices had been placed on his phones and that if he made any kind of approach to the news media, he would be stopped before he could get anywhere near them. That suited him just fine. All he wanted to do now was put everything behind him, and get on with his second-chance at life.
“I’m sorry,” said Rebecca, “I hate to interrupt you two physicists at play, but this lowly mathematician is a little lost here. I still don’t understand how any of this stopped the second Slip from happening.”
“Of course,” said Jim firing a quick smile in her direction. “If I understand Adrianna correctly, we were saved by the fact that, in one of the alternate universes in our cluster on the space-time helix, the experiment was a success. Our alternate selves were a success.”
Rebecca still didn’t look convinced, so Jim continued, filling in the gaps as he saw them.
“Well, in this theoretical alternate—reality the experiment went ahead as planned. The tachyon wave was activated and it stopped the Slip from occurring in their reality.”
“Okay, but how did that affect us?”
“You remember the signals we received, how each was just a little bit different to what we were expecting?”
Rebecca gave a nod of understanding.
“The tachyon’s we were picking up were Adrianna’s vagrant particles; they strayed into our section of the time stream in our universe. They must have come from a reality so close to us that the signal was still strong enough to neutralize our own impending Slip, as well as their own.”
“How did they get here though?
“Through one of the many locations where our universe bleeds over into the alternates,” interjected Adrianna. “Theoretically there are plenty of them scattered throughout the universe; points in space and time that overlap both our universe and at least one other alternate reality, so similar at that particular point that all matter in that location is essentially shared by multiple universes. It’s the universal equivalent of cloud computing, it saves space and energy. In fact there doesn’t even need to be any of these overlaps in existence right now, so long as they do exist somewhere in the future and past of our timeline. Given that they will exist and that the primary trait of tachyons is they move backward in time… well, you see?”
“Yes. Yes. Of course, the alternate tachyon beam could have passed through one of these overlaps and moved down the timeline until they reached our particular spot on the timeline, right?… Amazing!”
Adrianna’s cheeks flushed at the praise. “Well. You know, it was right there in front of us waiting for us to discover it. It’s still just a theory, of course.”
The breeze picked up and became a cold steel wind that made all three of them pull their coats tighter. The rustling branches now echoed with a mournful howl, punctuating the silence that had seeped into their conversation like an early morning fog.
“So, what’s next for you Adrianna?” asked Jim, sensing all three were ready to move on.
An impish smile crossed her angelic face, “Well, now we know these alternate universes probably exist, I think it’s high time we had a little chat with each other, don’t you?”
EPILOGUE
Philosophy will clip an Angels wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Her toes made tiny waves that rippled out from the wooden dock toward the setting sun. The early evening light flickered and glinted off the water as bats wove spectral blurs over the lake’s surface, chasing their supper. From the far bank, the musical trill of a bird hidden deep in the green of a summer lilac floated ghostlike across the water, carried by a cool breeze that rustled through the crisp fall leaves.
Daddy said the bird was called a Willow Lark, and when mommy and he had first found out that they were pregnant with her, they had sat on the old wooden dock and dangled their feet in the water just like she was doing now. Daddy said Mommy loved the sound of the bird and they had decided that was what they would call their baby girl. Good thing Mommy didn’t like Hedgehogs, her Daddy had teased.
Daddy cried when he talked about her and mommy. He had told her lots of things that first night, as he tucked her into bed in the cabin at Shadow Lake. He told her how sorry he was he had hurt her with his car, how he never meant to do it. He said he had been angry, that he and mommy were having a fight, and that he had been mad. He told her how very much he had missed her.
Her daddy’s face had been damp with tears, so she had sat up in her bed, thrown her arms around his neck and told him it was okay. After a little while, she told daddy about the warm place. She explained about the time after the accident, before she found herself standing on the street with Mummy. Lark told him about the pretty man who had found her in the darkness and who had scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the place with the shining people. The place where a single stream ran through a green field that stretched far up into distant mountains, and where butterflies and birds chased each other through a cobalt blue sky and the clouds spoke to her as though they had known her forever.
Her daddy had said nothing to her. He had listened with an odd look on his face. But when she was finished explaining, he had paused for a moment, then kissed her lightly on her head. “I love you, little bird,” he said as he left the room. Her memories of that other place were further away now, and the more Lark tried to hunt them down the more elusive they became.
But she did remember one thing, the pretty man’s name was Benjamin, and he could fly.
From the cabin, Lark heard the voice of Rebecca calling for her to come on in for dinner, and she released the thought, allowing it to float away from her like a leaf caught on a gentle summer breeze.
Afterword
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Toward Yesterday. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
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