Just Numbers

The fluorescent ceiling light was buzzing overhead, and Ryo thought it might be the only sound in the entire library. He glanced at his watch and a digital

2:27 AM

stared back at him. The watch had been a gift from his father when Ryo had decided to pursue physics. His father had been, notoriously, a lover of bad puns, so as mocking as the face of the watch seemed at this moment, reflecting such wee hours as it was, the engraving on the back, JUST NUMBERS, never failed to lighten his spirits and spur his motivations when he needed it most. His father loved watching Ryo succeed in his diligent, unidirectional pursuit of his dreams, but was also a strong advocate for living life, or stopping to smell the roses every once in a while, so to speak.

The night was growing stale and he still had a mountain of work to climb. He fumed at past-Ryo for neglecting this grant renewal paperwork for so long. Unfortunately, it was all too easy to blow it off when grading papers, weekly physics lectures, and, of course, his research on space-time filled every other available moment throughout the semester. Sometimes he wondered if being “Dr. Watanabe” was worth all this trouble.

“Okay, pity party quota’s been filled. Time to refocus and get back to work,” he thought. 

He was attempting to formulate his next thought when a woman hurried past the window of the stale library cubicle. His thoughts overlapped modestly in the following order:

1. “How did anyone else get in here at this time of night?” He was only there as he had been fortunate enough to persuade the physics librarian to allow him access after hours. 

1. “What’s the hurry? Where’s she going?”

1. “That’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Well, there was no focusing on grant renewal paperwork now. 

He jumped to his feet and quietly opened the door to the cubicle. He followed in her direction, but she was nowhere to be seen. Rounding a corner, he caught a glimpse of her beige tailcoat as it flurried around the next bend, toward the computer lab. He slowed and paused before following her around the last corner. Peeking around the paint-covered brick wall, his eyes narrowed in the dim light, straining to see what she was doing. 

He saw her silhouette bending over a keyboard, her hand wiggling the computer mouse, as if she was hurriedly searching for something. Apparently, she didn’t find what she was looking for and moved to the next computer. He watched her cycle through several computers and thought to head back to his cubicle, feeling a little voyeuristic at this point (“she probably just saved a file for class on a computer and is now looking for it”) but before he could do so, an all-consuming bright light flashed, engulfing his entire field of vision. Ryo jumped with a start and shielded his eyes. When he reopened them, the woman had disappeared. 

He ran to the computer lab, but the door was locked. He scanned his ID for entrance and threw open the glass door. He paused, bewildered, uncertain of what it was exactly that he was looking for or expecting to find. He couldn’t be sure which computer she had been using; it was too dark. So he started jiggling mice near where he had last seen her. 

As he tried various computers, the memory of an old, black and white film he had seen as a kid floated through his mind. A man was trying books on a bookshelf in attempts to reveal a hidden door.

The image was washed out as a flare of bright light came violently toward him. He had found the hidden door.

Eyes still closed, Ryo could hear busy traffic, feel the ambient breeze of an early summer’s morning, and smell the food cart on the corner. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself in the middle of a busy crosswalk, being gently jostled this way and that by unaffected passersby. 

He recognized the area as that behind the library and looked around rapidly for the woman he had been tailing. The bright morning sun was reflecting brilliantly off the skyscrapers surrounding the intersection, and he thought it an impossible task to find the elusive woman amidst the buzz. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark-haired woman near the cafe. He looked and saw her reflection staring back at him in the cafe windows, and he broke into a run. In his haste, he crashed into a passerby, causing the unexpecting crosswalker’s heap of papers to scatter to the ground. Ordinarily, he would have stopped to help, but if he did, he felt he would surely lose sight of the woman.

“Sorry about that!” he yelled to the man behind him, without glancing back. His eyes remained glued to the reflection in the cafe window. It disappeared before he could reach her, but he spotted her trailing around a nearby corner, into an alley behind the library. 

It occurred to him that he didn’t really know why he was continuing his pursuit. At first, it had been concern for the woman that motivated him, but now, he felt that she alone could help him to understand the surprising events that had surpassed this evening (morning?). He saw her slip into a service door at the end of the alley and flew toward it. Throwing open the door, another bright light engulfed him. He recognized the feeling, and he knew that when he opened his eyes again that he would, once again, find himself somewhere else entirely. 

It was a quiet place this time, and when his eyes adjusted to the dim light once more, he found himself in the Sakana Aquarium, a few miles away. He had visited the impressive aquarium several times in his youth, both with his parents and on school field trips. He stood facing the stories-high plexiglass wall of the central saltwater aquarium. The whole room glowed blue and calm, and this time, he did not feel the urge to look around for the woman. Somehow, he knew that she would not be there. This shift felt different. This time he had the sense that he had been significantly displaced in time as well as space.

He took in the peaceful aura of the room. The familiar fishy, humid scent flooded his mind with memories. He noticed a small, black-haired boy standing next to him, watching the lazy fish swim by. A woman, whom he assumed to be the boy’s mother, called, and he turned and ran to her. 

He overheard her nagging the boy the way his own mother did when he was young. “Your shoes are untied, you untidy little boy. Tie them up again.” Then after a moment, “No, you didn’t do it right, try again…” He knew that voice, but as he turned to look, the room began to swirl. He was again being pulled to another place inexplicably. As the room was fading out of view, he saw, through the aquarium glass, on the other side, was himself, watching the fish swim by, and he was standing next to a little, dark-haired boy with untied shoe laces...

Ryo found himself standing on a small, quiet, residential sidewalk, the hustle and he could hear the bustle of the city just a few blocks away. He looked up and down the street in efforts to get a grip on his orientation. Being unfamiliar with this part of the city, he instead looked up to the spires of the large, purple and dark red Victorian-style home standing in front of him. The spires were framed by an overcast gray sky with low-lying, swift-moving clouds. The house was surrounded by a quaint yard boasting an elegant rose garden, and a chest-high black, wrought iron fence.

In the first-floor window, he saw the beautiful woman sitting, tea cup in hand, staring back at him with a slight smile. His heart leapt into his chest. She waved, as if to gesture that he should come join her. She was sitting across from an older woman. The whole scene seemed to unfold in a silent slow motion. The woman returned to her conversation. As he watched then, the breeze brushed Ryo’s face, and with it, a few dry, yellow leaves floated to join their brethren, chasing each other down the cobbled stone street. 

He desperately longed to stay here, to slip into this reality and to join the women in the house, which he knew would be warm and smell like lilacs, green tea, and stale books, but he began to be whisked away yet again. The old Victorian receded from view and he found himself once again at the back alley entrance to the library.

More slowly this time, he opened the door. He half expected the bright light to engulf him yet again, but instead, he found an empty, windowless hallway. He could hear his footsteps echoing down the hall as his steady steps met the asbestos tiles. At the end of the hallway glowed a soft light emitting from an open door. As he came closer, he could hear a soft, casual conversation taking place between a man and woman. Ryo approached and peered in. There he found the woman sitting on a table and an older man in a white lab coat. 

“Ah, Dr. Watanabe, we’ve been expecting you,” the man greeted him warmly. 

“You were?” Ryo heard himself say. “I mean, excuse me, but who are you? I don’t believe we’ve met”. Ryo extended his hand in acquaintance. 

The man returned the extension and as they shook, Ryo experienced an eerie moment of recognition, yet he could not quite place where he had seen the man before.

“We’re here,” the man started, meeting the woman’s knowing gaze for a moment, “to warn you, in a sense, about your research.” 

“My research?” questioned Ryo. “What about my research?”

“You are currently entertaining some very interesting theories regarding space-time, are you not?” the man continued. 

“Yes, I am,” affirmed Ryo.

“Well, certain equations and applications can have significant consequences, as I’m sure you know. We just want to make sure that you are being careful, and that you don’t start down the wrong path.”

Thoroughly confused now, Ryo admitted, “I’m not really quite sure what you mean.” He didn’t quite see how all of this irksome crypticism was really necessary. 

“Come closer,” motioned the man. 

Ryo stepped toward him hesitatingly until he was at the center of the room. He noticed that he was standing between a set of mirrors, one on each wall and directly opposite one another.

“Notice the mirrors,” the man encouraged. 

Ryo looked and saw the endless trail of reflected Ryos looking back at him, becoming greener and less like himself the more distant they appeared. 

“Consider your infinite mirror reflections like the infinite parallel realities within which you exist, each slightly different than the next.”

It remained unclear to Ryo what the man was trying to tell him. Luckily, he continued. 

“Now consider that, in the quest for knowledge regarding how to breach the divisions between one Dr. Watanabe to the next, imagine if, somehow, the barriers between them ceased to exist entirely. Each Dr. Watanabe would be able to roam freely into the next cell or others at will. Some realities would have two, others would have none… it would be complete chaos. You get the picture.” Ryo was so thoroughly confused by the whole situation that the man went on. "So, I guess what I'm really trying to say is that, I don't suppose it would be the worst thing in the world if, I don't know, someday, your work just... blew away?"

Ryo didn't entirely understand and remained skeptical. “How can I trust any of this? I don’t even know who you are,” he queried. 

“You don’t recognize me yet?” the man asked with gentle, smiling eyes. Ryo must have still looked stunned and confused because the man rolled up his sleeve to reveal a silver, digital watch. He removed it and showed Ryo the engraving on the back.

JUST NUMBERS

But it couldn’t be. 

“We are going to send you back now, Dr. Watanabe. Obviously, we don’t want to risk saying too much. Thank you for humoring us, and take care, okay?” he finished light-heartedly.

Before Ryo could gather his wits to respond or ask any of the millions of burning questions that had exploded in his mind over the last few minutes, the room around him began to dissolve. As it did, he heard the man (himself?) yell out, "Oh, and don't forget, sometimes the best things of life don't have anything to do with work at all! Don't forget to live it!" They faded and he felt as if he was slipping, falling into empty darkness.

~~~~~~~

Ryo woke with a start, at first not knowing where he was. He hurriedly wiped away a small stream of drool that had formed at the corner of his mouth and realized that he was still in the library cubicle. Regaining his orientation, he saw the stack of unfinished grant renewal paperwork sitting disheveled before him. “Well, it worked decently enough as a pillow but it’s not going to do me any more good than that in this condition,” he thought. Ryo felt uneasy, as if he had had some seriously strange dreams. He could feel them floating there beneath the surface of his consciousness but couldn’t recall them. 

He glanced at his watch and a digital 

7:41 AM 

stared back at him. Still foggy with sleep, he responded slowly to what exactly this meant. Upon realization, he jumped to his feet and began scrambling his stack of papers into his bag. He had to teach a lecture in 19 minutes in the east building. 

Clutching his half-together messenger bag to his chest, he raced out of the cubicle. “East building - back exit,” he thought. He turned and started off in the other direction, toward the exit at the rear of the building. He emerged from the building into a bleak alley and a blinding morning. As he emerged from the alley, he saw the sun rays bouncing off of the tall windows of the intersection’s skyscrapers. He glanced at his watch again as he waited amongst the herd of people waiting to cross the street with him. The ‘Walk’ sign alighted and he began pushing his way hurriedly through the wall of pedestrians as quickly as he could. 

In his sole focus, Ryo did not notice the man who came barreling into him, scattering all of Ryo’s papers to the ground. Ryo glanced in the direction of the man but he was already halfway toward the cafe. The man’s cry of “sorry about that!” trailed off and combined with the busy morning traffic sounds and hustle and bustle of the city corner. Ryo stood, dazed, at the stack of grant renewal paperwork, sheets of which were currently being trampled, tracked across the street, under taxi cabs and the wheels of motor bikes.  

He stood agape as he tried to figure out how to retrieve his papers and get to class on time, when a woman in the window of the cafe on the corner caught his eye. A wave of deja-vu washed over him. Had he seen this woman before? His overlapping thoughts formed thusly:

1. Why am I standing here staring at this woman when my life’s work is blowing down the street?
2. I am seriously blocking traffic right now. 
3. That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

Well, there was no focusing on the grant renewal paperwork now. 

She was looking out the window, half smiling. She waved, and for a moment, Ryo thought (hoped) she was looking at him. On the sidewalk outside the cafe, Ryo saw a young girl wave back, enter the cafe, and share an embrace with the beautiful woman. A shroud of disappointment dampened his heart as he looked back at his free-flowing papers, some now floating half down the well-trafficked streets. 

He had half a mind to just let them blow away. Then maybe he’d stop in for a cup of coffee.