“Try me.”
“Well, basically, you’d have to spin around in a centrifuge at the speed of light for approximately three years in order to return to earth a hundred years later. The physical toll would be near-deadly, and besides, a permanent residence in an unexplored future might prove highly undesirable. Now don’t get me wrong, future travel is without question a very intriguing concept, but the merits of such a trip are still unexaminable since we have not yet reached a designated point in the future where our test-travelers, a few brave chimpanzees in stasis, eventually return. That is, if they return at all. Only at that point can we--or shall I say our successors, since we’ll all be dead by then--appropriately judge the outcome of such a voyage with any true data. But again, this is of no direct concern to us, because time travel is still in the early stages of experimentation, and doesn’t wholly apply to your personal situation.“
“I’m totally lost. Why tell me all of this?”
“Because I need to preface my explanation. As I said, everything that’s been happening to you over the past three years has resulted from an intensive study in time travel. It is a direct result of these studies that we stumbled upon something extraordinary, something that ultimately led to your plight...a totally unexpected revelation.”
“A revelation?”
She took a deep breath, then said, “Richard...have you ever once said to yourself, ‘What if?’”
“What if?”
“That’s right...like, how would my life be different today if I’d made only one small change in the past, if I’d done something entirely different?“
Richard pondered the thought, then offered, “I suppose...we all kinda wish we could undo the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Is this what you mean?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Then, yes, I can definitely say I regret making certain decisions in life. Ones that could’ve taken me down different paths. But I can’t think of too many instances because, and I’ve never told you before--but somehow I guess you already know--I really don’t remember much of anything prior to three years ago. Only recently, with everything that’s been going on, have snippets of my past memories come back. And even then, they seem disjointed. For instance, at one point I remember being a college student, and then I clearly recall being a schoolteacher in a classroom. And then I could remember myself sitting in a dark alley shooting up heroin. All of these images are memories, as clear as day, that don’t tie in with one another. They really don’t make any sense.”
“Actually, they do make sense. There’s a reason for such diverse memories.”
“Okay...so you want to tell me what they are?”
“The reason why you remember all these different things is because…because Richard Sparke has lived all the lives from which these memories come from.”
“Wait a minute...how could I have lived a half-dozen lives?”
“I didn’t say you. I said Richard Sparke.”
“Huh?”
“And actually, there’s only five lives.”
Richard hesitated, rubbed his tired eyes. “If you’re trying to confuse me further, you’re doing a fine job.”
“I’m sorry...”
“Pam, Heather, whoever the hell you are. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
She nodded, then started speaking, never once taking her eyes off of Richard. “Let me tell you a story. A little more than four years ago, a great scientist, highly accomplished in the field of quantum physics, defied all of science and nature and the doubts of his peers, and miraculously found a way to harvest the same unique energy that is present in black holes in space. By doing so, he was able to reverse the process and create white holes in a laboratory environment. He found, quite by accident, that this energy could be channeled toward the dilation of time.”
“Dilation of time?”
“He was able to alter it. But not in a sense where he could utilize it for travel--although those were his initial intentions. This scientist, by accident, was able to split time, whereas, and I’m trying to explain this in the simplest of terms to help you understand, it branches off into parallel lines that run concurrently with one another. Hence you have multiple timelines that co-exist alongside one another--albeit on different planes of existence.” She held her forearms out as if warding off a blow to demonstrate her explanation.
“I’m still lost.”
“You won’t be in a second. Once this scientist realized what he’d done, he abandoned his research on time travel and immediately planned a course of action, taking full advantage of his new discovery. Despondent over his disabling physical and mental state, he set out to create alternate timelines, all of which he could experience firsthand. After nearly a year of study and meticulous data entry, he was able to make changes in his past that would ultimately influence how his life turned out. His goal, as I alluded to earlier, was to see how his life would’ve changed had he made different decisions. Answer all the ‘what ifs’. You with me now?”
“I think so. Go ahead.”
“His health had been his primary motivation. The scientist suffered from a very rare neurological disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease that attacks the neuromuscular systems, and is wholly debilitating. Wheelchair bound and rapidly deteriorating of mind and body, he set out to create an alternate timeline where he wasn’t lame and dying, a place where he could go and live disease and pain free. He succeeded in creating four additional timelines, making five in all that ran side by side with one another.”
There was a pause, a deafening silence filled with doubt that could no way be attended to. This enigma was way too difficult to grasp, an obstacle more extraordinary than anything he’d encountered in the last two days. And for Christ’s sake, it was just the beginning. Once it all began to soak in, he asked, “Who is this scientist?”
She hesitated, sucked a deep breath into her lungs, then said, “His name is Richard Sparke. He is the original Richard Sparke. You, Richard Sparke, are a result of one of his timelines.”
“Oh my God...” If what Pam just said was true, then there would be five Richard Sparkes out there right now. At the thought of this, his heart sunk like a rock in a pond, settled in his stomach where it pounded out its fear and churned his gut. He grasped his midsection with one arm, rubbed a temple with his free hand. When he found a bit of strength, he asked, “When did you say this experiment took place?”
“The additional timelines were created three years ago.”
“That means...” A lump formed in his throat. The words wouldn’t come.
“It means,” Pam said, “that prior to three years ago, you didn’t exist.”
Changes
With no car at his disposal, he’d have to walk to the precinct. Leonard guessed the distance to be about three miles, which, in his current state of fatigue, would feel much longer and more painful. He tackled the streets of his neighborhood on wobbly legs, taking notice now of the subtle yet frightening changes that had taken place in Fairview, how some of the houses showed different lawns, flowers, fences, cars in the driveways. Others looked very much the same as they did prior to the blue light, as much as he could remember of them, that is, but he knew that if he looked close enough, he’d find dissimilarities somewhere, whether it was the type of window installed in the house or the absence of a weather vane perched on the roof. Passing by Jamie Hunt’s home, he stopped, only to see a woman who wasn’t Jamie and a kid who looked a bit Oriental.
Location-wise and style, all of the neighborhood structures remained identical. So did the streets and the number of homes, even the buildings as he came closer into town. But when you took in Fairview as a whole, it seemed to have undergone a strong character change, as if its heart and personality had been the subject of chemical tinkering. Fairview on Prozac, maybe.
The streets got busier as he neared Park Avenue. If he’d come here first he wouldn’t have been able to tell that some weird transmutation had
taken place. The usual fare dominated the scenery. The sun was shining brightly, the lunchtime crowds were out in full force, taking the cafes and luncheonettes by storm. Mothers walked with strollers, men and women jogged and walked dogs. Typical day in Fairview, so it appeared.
As normalcy trickled its way into Leonard’s life, he wondered just what to do next--certainly he could never return to the house he once called home unless everything that had happened this morning turned out to be some cruel joke, a hallucination, or maybe some crazy dream.
As he pondered a reachable explanation to the madness, he spotted Officer Spencer Reed issuing a ticket to a new-looking Mitsubishi whose time must’ve expired on the meter. Leonard waited until the traffic cleared and crossed the street.
“Spencer...”
Spencer Reed’s brown eyes pinned Leonard. His thick eyebrows came together in a look of puzzlement. “Len? I thought you were on desk duty.”
“Hi.” Leonard wasn’t sure what to say, if anything would make sense coming from his mouth. He hoped and prayed that things would simply shift back to normal, as far-fetched as that thought seemed at the moment. After a thread of silence, he asked, “How’s it going with the search for Sparke?” It was all he could come up with to break the uncomfortable silence. As well, he wanted to see if Spencer had any additional information for him, something that might explain the chaos disrupting his world. His heart pounded in wait for a reply.
“Who?” Spencer replied. His gaze on Leonard grew even more suspicious.
“Richard Sparke...you know...the guy they were looking for in connection with the murders?”
Spencer dropped his hands to his side. “Murders? Len, what on earth are you talking about?”
Frustration rose in him like steam from boiling water, and he had to control himself from shaking the answers out of Spencer. He bowed his head, clenched his fists and rubbed his eyes, trying desperately to shake away the confusion, but it was too persistent. Was it possible that Spencer didn’t know about Sparke and the murders? You bet. It this mixed-up, muddled-up world, Leonard realized, these murders never happened.
“Len...are you all-right?” Spencer went to place a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. Leonard backed away.
Right into traffic.
A black Sentra came to a screeching halt, despite its slow velocity. He fell forward, hands against the hood to break his fall. He then staggered sideways across the road, careening away from Spencer’s call. He raced across the sidewalk, all the way to Park Avenue, across the street, weaving in and out of cars waiting at a red light. He raced into the parking lot of the police station, saw his car parked in its usual spot.
Hands cupped around his brow, he peered through the driver’s side window. The interior of the car was a mess. Newspapers and coffee cups strewn everywhere. Jesus, if Reese saw this he’d be assigned to desk duty at once.
Len? I thought you were on desk duty.
He heard the door to the precinct open. Then, voices. That of Kevin. And...
Oh my God...
It was his very own voice he heard. He turned, saw a man standing next to his partner. Dumbfounded, Leonard watched as the man descended the steps of the precinct and made an approach toward the cruiser. Leonard stepped back, still gazing at the man next to Kevin.
A perfect replica of himself. Leonard Moldofsky.
In a panic, he ducked down and scurried away unseen, back onto Park Avenue and down the sidewalk to the first side road where he crouched down behind the cloak of a azalea bush in someone’s front yard. He stayed there for a half hour, thinking of only one thing the entire time.
Twin nemesis.
Truth
“How is that possible...?” The words melted in his mouth like butter, his brain feeling the same way, and he had to lean back against the soft leather of the sofa to calm the encroaching dizziness. The truth had turned out to be the biggest blow of all: just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, enter the truth of the matter rearing its ugly head. Contending with it would be no slice of pie either. “That’s why prior to three years ago, I don’t remember anything...because I didn’t exist!” He rubbed a hand through his hair.
Pam nodded. “You and two other Richard Sparkes were created at the same exact time. That is when all your lives began.”
“Wait...I thought you said there were five Richards?”
“There are...but he started out with just one additional timeline.”
“Jesus...how the hell did he do it?”
“It’s an extremely complicated science, something you won’t understand.”
“Try me--you owe me.”
She paused, then grinned. “You sure?”
“Absolutely. I feel the need to know everything.”
She smoothed out the wrinkles in her jeans, then spoke. “It has to do with an energy force called ‘dark matter’. It’s the same nearly undetectable energy that has existed since the time of the big bang. Ironically, dark matter is now only known to be found in white holes. When Richard the scientist produced a white hole in the laboratory environment, he found the incredible volume of mass and energy within quickly losing itself to potential energy, ultimately creating a mass of dark matter. Soon thereafter he discovered that dark matter was tied to the cosmological constant of time.”
“How?”
“Natural warps of space formed, right there in the lab. A 'repulsive force' resulted from the new space being created. The potential energy dissipated, and the dark matter spread. It created a rift.”
Much of this flew way over Richard’s head. Still, he seemed to remember a portion of everything she said. Somehow, suddenly, it was starting to make sense to him. “What did he do once he found the rift?”
“This is where it gets really confusing. With minimal sleep, he set to work, spending twenty hours a day, and sometimes longer, studying the rift. He soon realized that the rift wasn’t a passage into another time, as he first presumed, but a gate into another timeline. A mirror-reality. So, like Big Brother keeping tabs on a chosen one, he watched himself--albeit a very different version of himself--leading a lifestyle he greatly desired. A stable man working a normal nine-to-five job, with a house and a family, a wife, daughter, and mother who shared his loving home. What Richard the scientist found was a man who experienced a great level of unassuming happiness, something he’d lacked his entire life despite the knowledge he retained, the riches he’d won in his illustrious life. It was at this turning point he discovered that unless you had this simple happiness in your life, contentment was virtually impossible. On top of that, he also knew that even simple happiness meant nothing when you didn’t have your health, something he didn’t possess.” She paused then added, “Richard the scientist just didn’t want to be like this man, the other Richard Sparke. He wanted to be him. A man free of terminal illness.”
Richard shook his head in utter disbelief. “How is that possible?”
“You want the science?”
“In your best grammar-school English.”
“The basic equation is simple, once dark matter is produced. With dark matter present, no energy is required for time lines to split, thus creating many possible realities, many alternate time lines. But multiple possible futures require the creation of new universes first. To do this, matter and dark matter must be balanced. Once this is accomplished, the creation of a new alternate reality, a new universe, happens automatically. It is a zero-energy event. And all such realities will continue to exist indefinitely so long as all alternate realities spinning off the common time line balance matter and dark matter.”
“So you’re saying that Richard Sparke the scientist’s world is the common timeline, and that he created additional entire universes with alternate timelines that branched off from it?”
“Correct. I know it sounds complicated. But you have to remember, the universe we live in was caused solely through the presence of dark matter. Once dark matter was duplicated, additional universes sprung
into place.”
“So how did he plan on becoming another Richard Sparke?”
“Okay...I mentioned that all matter and dark matter must be balanced in order for multiple timelines to exist indefinitely side by side, in harmony. Richard the scientist spent a good six months studying the family man in the alternate timeline. He learned everything about him. All his whims and ways. Then, through a great deal of experimentation found that if he ever so slightly disrupted the balance of matter and dark matter between the two universes, a strange anomaly occurred, something he termed as bleeding. Bleeding is the synchronous exchange of memories, personality traits, inclinations, and tendencies of the same person from one timeline to the next. As you might guess from your own experiences, Richard the scientist began to harvest some of the memories and feelings and talents from Richard the family man from the alternate timeline. Likewise, Richard the family man began to obtain the attributes of Richard the scientist. The only difference was that our family man started gathering mental data without the knowledge of what was happening.”
“So he began to think he was losing his mind...just like I did.”
She nodded.
“So all those memories that miraculously evolved in my head, the talents and qualities I suddenly possessed, were all by reason of bleeding.”
“Correct.”
“Jesus...I can remember, just recently, sitting around a dinner table with Samantha, Debra, and my mother...” He stopped as an incredible thought entered his mind. “Oh my God... Pam, is it possible that they’re all part of this other Richard’s family?”
She nodded. “Not only possible. It’s true.”
“Holy shit...so that’s why I had those memories.” He paused, thinking about the serene scene that had entered his mind just recently, and many times in the past as well. Then the image of this melted away, leaving him with many more memories of pasts he never lived. Many of them happy, many more daunting. “So what happened next?“
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