by Dario Solera
“What I believe,” he said with a pondering voice, “is that we must decide how to handle the anomaly. Just policing it won’t be enough, as we only control one side, and we don’t know how big it is yet.”
“You talk like we won’t be able to stop it.”
“Well, Sarah, do you really believe we can shut it down?”
She didn’t answer right away, looking at the snow in front of her and moving her legs forward with a steady rhythm. “No. I don’t.”
Flashlights moved in the misty darkness, swift and sinuous, as if dancing in midair.
Sarah stopped walking, a thrill building up in her gut and sending goose bumps on her arms. Speaking of aliens...
“Don’t move,” a voice came from nowhere in front of them. The flashlights closed in. “Stay where you are.”
“What the hell,” she muttered. “One can’t even have a walk in peace.”
“Dr. Davinson, Professor Richards?”
“Yes,” she exhaled. “What did we do?”
“We have orders to take you to the camp.”
“Orders? From who?”
“Colonel Rubais.”
“Never heard of him before. Anyway, you’re a bit late. We were going back on our own. You could have saved a hike—both for you and for us.”
The soldier pointed his flashlight at Sarah’s face. “Let’s move, smartass.”
Fourteen
“Here,” Gagnier said, entering the tent. “I managed to steal a couple of sandwiches and hot tea.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Léa said, grabbing both. “Thanks.” She bit into the sandwich. It was cold and gummy, but her mouth salivated at the feeling of something to chew on. “I was starving.”
“So where are the two scientists?” Gagnier asked.
“You mean Sarah and the British professor?”
He nodded with his mouth full.
“They went to recover their car and then home, I suppose.”
Inside one of the new tents that the army had built a couple kilometers from the original camp, they were sitting near an electrical stove. Despite the heating, the air was cold and Léa’s hands and feet were frigid.
“Home,” she continued. “We might not have one anymore. Even if we had, we might not be able to go back to it.”
“My men asked me when we’re going back.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I could pilot the helicopter, but it’s damaged. We don’t know if going through that thing is dangerous. They understand. They’re good soldiers.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re a good doctor.”
Léa shrugged.
“Come on! Don’t be modest. You saved a lot of people today, and in the days before.”
“I just stitched up wounds. I haven’t even finished my training.”
“You will.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t believe we’ll ever go back to our previous lives. Even if we make it… on the other side, there’s war. And soon there will be here as well.”
“You sound desperate.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. Not yet, at least.”
“Then I’ll have to stay around you. I like optimists.”
They laughed a little and then continued to munch on their poor meals in silence, with the incandescent coils of the heater capturing their gaze and warming their faces.
“Are you seeing someone?” Gagnier asked.
“You mean—”
“Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked in these circumstances.”
“It’s fine,” she said pausing for a moment. “I’m not seeing anyone. It’s complicated.”
“Of course.”
“Look, this is going to sound weird, but I’m not interested in you.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m sorry. It didn’t come out the way it should.” She let go a sigh before continuing. It always was difficult. “What I meant is, I’m not interested in men.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“And you?”
“No. I mean, I’m not interested in men, either.”
They burst out in laughter.
His eyes wandered on the floor, or maybe on the remnants of his sandwich. “You know, life of a professional soldier. I used to be engaged to a woman.” He paused, shaking his head. “Well, I better go now.”
“Thanks for the dinner,” she said with a smile.
After Gagnier left, Léa went outside. It was ten o’clock, and the sky was dark except for orange patches illuminated by the city lights. The air stung on her face. It was going to be a long, cold, sleepless night for the refugees in the tents.
She was alone, and her mind kept fleeting over to Sarah. She tried to picture how life would be with her—the life that had been interrupted so abruptly. But it wasn’t her Sarah. No, she was dead, and that was the end of the story.
Armed soldiers patrolled the perimeters in pairs, and two others stood near the muddy road that ran from the old encampment. Muffled sounds came from the tents, which had their small plastic windows lit from the inside.
What was awaiting her? Life in that same camp at worst, or in a hospital helping people at best. Either way, she saw herself alone.
The two guards at the gate moved and illuminated the road with a large reflector. Someone was walking toward them in the night with tiny flashlights.
“Identify yourselves,” a soldier called. His voice was loud but not angry.
“Search party. We found the two scientists.”
Léa walked over to them.
“My car was stolen,” Sarah said to no one in particular. “We were wondering if we could get a lift to Geneva.”
“It’s likely that your car was towed away when we cleared the surrounding area, but anyway, our orders are simple, madam. We cannot transport anyone to anywhere until tomorrow morning.”
“But we’re not refugees,” Sarah protested.
“All units are on patrol at the moment. You’ll have to wait till morning.”
“Hey,” Léa said, seeing that no one was going to talk further. “There are several empty bunks in my tent. In fact, I’m the only occupant. And I’m sure there’s room for the professor in one of the other tents.”
Sarah studied her for a little while. Her gaze was tired. “Professor?” she asked.
The man hesitated with his mouth half open. “Well, I guess it won’t hurt me. Considering the circumstances, I’m lucky to still be alive.”
“Camping night it is, then.”
“Professor, those two are the men’s tents,” Léa said, pointing in the darkness. “Ask for Lieutenant Gagnier; he will find you a proper accommodation. Tell him I sent you.”
Richards laughed. “I will. Thank you,” he said before walking off and disappearing inside the nearest tent.
Léa and Sarah walked in the dark.
“We even have heaters. We didn’t on the other side.”
“Was it bad?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. I barely had the time to understand what was happening before I was dragged into the emergency department of my hospital. From then on, I just stitched up wound after wound, nonstop. And then I ended up here. And found you.”
“I saw what you did today,” Sarah said as they entered their tent, ignoring Léa’s last words.
“Well, yeah. I try to help.”
“You always have.” Glancing at the inside of the tent, she noted that the temperature was only slightly higher than outside.
“This is my bunk. You can pick any other. They’re all brand-new.”
“Sounds good,” Sarah said. “I’ll take this, then.”
“There’s a curtain you can pull shut around the bed.”
“As if we were complete strangers,” she joked.
“Yeah.”
Sarah sat on the cot, and the two remained in an embarrassed silence for a while, which caused
Léa’s mind to fill with a lot of questions. Did they see each other in Sarah’s world? It looked like they did not—not anymore. It was Sarah—even her smell was right from so close—and yet she felt like a different person somehow. “So,” she asked, resolved to break the ice again, “do you know what happened? How it happened?”
“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head a little. “No clue. In a way, the anomaly explains the results we got, but how it happened, well, that’s another story.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to fix it?”
Sarah sighed. “It’s not like something broke. Quite the opposite—something was created. We just don’t know how. And now, with the particle accelerator destroyed, we can only run computer simulations and hope to find a relevant mathematical model.”
“Will that help us?”
“Consider this: Two parallel dimensions, very similar to one another, just got connected in some way, and matter—people, vehicle, animals, and even air—is moving across their boundaries. Until yesterday, we didn’t know for sure that multiple dimensions could even exist. The funny thing is that we weren’t looking for them in the first place.”
“Only a coincidence, then.”
“Bad luck.”
“Isn’t it a good thing? I mean, ignore the war and the aliens. It’s an important discovery.”
“We are not ready. Look at what we’re doing,” Sarah said pointing outside. “Taking prisoners—because that’s what they are, not refugees.”
Léa considered Sarah’s words for a moment. Everything had gone wrong in both worlds. In hers, aliens scourged Geneva, and in this one, the military had taken over.
“Now tell me about these aliens.”
“Well, I don’t know much. There are these weird things flying and dropping bombs, but they don’t seem to be interested in relevant targets.”
“Like what?”
“Power plants, roads, airports.”
“Have you seen one of them?”
“You mean the actual creatures? No. No one has. None of those objects was ever shot down. I heard that bullets and missiles don’t even scratch them.”
“How many are there?”
A shrug. “Hundreds, all around the world, but attacking only Geneva. At first it was just two or three, and everybody believed it was a hoax, but then their quantity became apparent, and they were already concentrating here. The government was puzzled. I think they tried to communicate with them. And then they started bombing and killing people.”
Sarah stared at the floor for several moments, nodding.
“We are dying and we don’t know why.”
***
“You sleeping?” Léa asked quietly. She had been debating with herself on whether to utter those two words for an hour, and now she was almost panicking about what came next.
“No.”
Léa raised to a sitting position on the bunk near Sarah’s. Her heart drummed fast. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?” Sarah turned to face Léa and rested her head on her left arm.
In the darkness, Léa could see Sarah’s eyes glimmer. “Are you still—” No, wrong words. “In this world, are we…?”
“No. We broke up almost a year ago.” Her voice was a whisper.
Tears formed in Léa’s eyes.
Sarah got off her bed and sat near Léa, enclosing her shoulders in a soft embrace. “I’m sorry. It just didn’t work. That doesn’t mean that in your world things must go the same.”
“You are dead, Sarah,” she said between sobs. “You killed yourself.”
Fifteen
“Why?” The world spun around her as the question resounded in her ears, through her mind. “Why?” she repeated. “And when?”
Léa sniffled. “Six months ago. I found you dead in your bed one morning. You took pills, way too many. We had had a fight the night before. I thought it was my fault.”
“I’m sure it was not,” she managed to say in a whisper.
“All of this time, and I thought you died because of me.”
Sarah adjusted a wisp of red hair off of Léa’s face but then retracted her hand, shying away. “I can’t imagine a single reason I should kill myself because of you.” She didn’t know how to feel. Sad, maybe, but it seemed more like disappointment, as though she had let herself down. Which she had done.
After a while, Léa’s sobbing faded. “Am I still alive?”
“Yes, you are. I haven’t seen you in a while, but you’re fine.” A hint of a laugh left Sarah’s mouth. “It’s strange.”
“What?”
“Talking about our… duplicates in first person.”
“I suppose.”
Sarah’s expression changed to a slight frown. “Tell me the last thing we did together.”
“Well, that fight over work keeping us apart. The night before you—” She drew in a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “We hadn’t seen each other for two weeks. I was working long shifts at the hospital, and you had been busy at the Institute.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember?” she asked with hope in her voice.
“No. I mean, I could guess it was something like that, but I don’t remember that argument. Earlier?”
“You brought me for a visit at the Institute. You said that if I knew what you were doing there, it could help us be together.”
“No,” she said. “Although it’s a good idea.” She thought for a moment, closing her eyes. “Earlier. A month or so.”
“Well,” she began, then paused. “Weekend in Paris. You can’t not remember it.”
“I’ve never been to Paris,” Sarah said with a hint of frustration.
“It was your first time indeed. What else? Yes, you injured your left arm at the Institute. It was winter, last December I think. You have a scar that runs—”
She shook her head. “No, I have no scars. Let’s try something else. Who’s the mayor of Geneva?”
“Hmm.” Her eyes were red but the tears were gone now. “Baptiste Buensod.”
“It’s not him. Elected when?”
“A couple of years ago.”
“Even earlier. President of the United States?”
“Tina Cropper.”
“That’s it!” Sarah exclaimed.
“What?”
“She ran for the presidency but lost to Dan Hollands. His term ends next year.” Sarah stood, eyes wide with excitement. “Our dimensions split around three years ago, right before the election.”
“Hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. The electoral campaign was running already. It killed four thousand people.”
“Yes! What was the name?”
“Julia.”
“Of course. So that was at the beginning of September, and the election was early November. That leaves us with a two-month window, three years ago.”
“Before you moved here.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t understand. Both your… copies moved here from the States.”
“Yeah.” Sitting back down, Sarah recalled the memories of her abrupt departure: a suitcase with some clothes, an airplane ticket, and no idea about what she would do once in Geneva. Richards hadn’t even confirmed the date for her first interview. ”It appears that not all events diverged when the realities branched off. I’m not sure, it boggles my mind.”
“What where you doing then? Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. I was completing the preliminary analysis for my experiment.”
“This experiment?”
“Yes. I had had it in my mind for a while. It got me hired at the Institute.”
“Oh.”
They were silent for a time. Sarah tried to think of a way to explain what had happened, and to demonstrate that it wasn’t her course of life that had spun up another dimension in which war was raging. People on the other side, even Léa, wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t presented the experiment to Richards. Or would they? Perhaps they would exist anyway, but the
y would live in peace.
Léa parted her lips and a sound came out, but then she stopped.
Sarah waited.
“Did you find your biological parents?”
Sarah backed away from Léa a little to look into her eyes. She had known it was only a matter of time before the topic would come up. “No.”
“You did, on my side.”
“Yes?” Sarah felt tears forming in her eyes. “I quit searching for them when I moved to Switzerland.”
“Well,” Léa said, “they’re still here. They are French and lived in France, and they moved to Geneva to be with you. Sarah, you came here for them, because they wouldn’t go to the US.”
Sarah sat on the bed with her lips parted, staring at Léa and incapable of talking for several moments. Her other self had found her biological parents—a feat that she had given up long ago. “What are their names?” she asked with a low, timid voice.
“Jacques and Geraldine.”
“Tell me you also know their last names.”
Léa shook her head crooking her lips for a moment. “I don’t. You never told me. But I know where they live.”
Sixteen
“Good morning, everyone,” the official said from the front of the makeshift conference room.
“What’s his name?” Sarah whispered to the Professor Richards.
“Colonel Rubais of the air force. I spoke to him earlier. Orders come from someone higher in the chain of command, though.”
“So that’s him.”
Richards frowned.
“Yesterday night, those soldiers mentioned a colonel. It must be him.”
Rubais continued to speak. A slight breeze flapped the tarp walls of the tent. Sarah and Richards listened, standing at the back; except for them and a few doctors, all the other people were military.
“During the night no new refugees came through the anomaly, and early this morning a recon mission confirmed that the area is clear.”
“Excuse me, sir,” someone said from the crowd. “Do we know why they stopped coming?”
“No, Lieutenant. Something must have happened on the other side, and for that reason we are going to lock down the zone. Anything that comes through and does not walk will be fired at.”
