Mirrorverses

You will never know the exhilaration of being on the cusp of a scientific breakthrough. I could feel the bigwigs leering at me from far above trying to exert their power. But their presence to me was that of mere gnats. Their position above me behind the glass wall only symbolic of the financial prowess. But I am the one who held the key to a new world.

The world you see before you is composed of what we call Standard Model particles, but scientists propose a hidden sector that exists behind that world -- a sector composed of a copy of those Standard Model particles. 

A parallel universe. This parallel universe itself would be made of mirror matter. Using a controlled magnetic field, I was going to direct a pulse of cold energy into a neutron. And if done properly, I would detect neutron oscillations generating mirror neutrons.

I will have proven this alternate reality.

I had to write the directions down to remember them myself. But I turned the dials, clicked the right switches, and made several adjustments as lowered the neutrons into the tube. I pressed the power but and the room rumbled and lights began to dim. When finally, there was silence, I looked into the view screen to see the result. What I saw shocked me.

“Not a damned thing!” I was saying one hour later explaining the failed experiment.

I almost broke my fist as it hit the fancy table in the center of my living room. Jane was sitting to the side having said her peace.

“I knew I shouldn’t have hired someone who graduated from Baylor. I said, Luke, you know those Baylor grads all they know is partying and entry-level relativity.“

My words didn’t seem to penetrate her.

“That was an antique Pembroke,” she said.

I was taken aback, “What?”

“It was an antique Pembroke table you put a dent in it.”

“Honey aren’t you paying attention. I spent ten years of my life trying to make advancement in mirror neutron states and you’re just worried about some table.”

But then, as women do, she revealed her true meaning.

“Oh my goodness. It’s not just about some TABLE. If you would have paid attention to anything I just said before your hissy fit, I would have told you my mother just died!”

I stared at the ground incredulously. 

“How... did... I miss all that?”

“You don’t listen to me. You only think about yourself. You have a horrible temper...”

She stood, showing she meant business.

“And I’m afraid someday you’ll dent more than a table.”

She walked toward the door.

“I’m leaving you, Luke. I can’t put up with this.”

She stepped out the door but came back.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she said, “I’ve been cheating on you.”

Two beers, three brandies, five shots of tequila, and two vodkas later, I was on the bed watching TV. A sitcom was on and every laugh track felt directed at me. As I went to my nightstand to get the remote, I noticed the gun sticking out from the drawer. I grabbed it and held it firmly.

Then I thought about it. Thought about her smiling with her lover and the two of them laughing. Then I thought about stopping their laughter. 

I thought about it.

Man, I thought about it.

Then I blacked out.

I awoke to a splitting headache and a knock at the door. I screamed, “I’m coming” as if they could hear me as I rolled out of bed. It was probably Jane, I theorized, coming to her senses and crawling back to me. I passed a vase and felt this strange sense. Kind of the opposite of Deja Vu. I didn’t remember it.

I had no time to ponder the oddity as the knocking continued. I screamed louder, “I’m coming.” as I descended down the stairs. At this point, I was beginning whether my visitor had any home training because the knocking became relentless and loud. I scurried down the stairs ready for a fight. I yanked the door open.

“What the hell do you --”

On the other side stood two burly guys in grey suits. Hands at their side, motionless. Thankfully ignoring my outburst, they simply got down to business.

“Are you Luke Evergreen?”

“Speaking.”

They slapped handcuffs around my wrist.

“We’re taking you in.”

“Wait. Wait. What did I do?”

“You know what you did!”

Only I had no clue. They tossed me in the back of their dusty old Honda Civic and sped away as I still demanded answers. 

“Wait. Don’t you have to read me my Miranda rights.”

“We ain’t gotta read you shit. We’re bounty hunters.”

“Well, you two are going to be in big trouble. I’m a very important person.”

"Yeah, I’m an important person too, I’m the queen of France,” one quipped.

"And I'm Princess Leia," the other one chortled. 

And the two of them over-laughed in unison at their totally unfunny jokes.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

The jack asses.

“Come on! You have to at least tell me what you’re taking me in for.”

One of them rolled his eyes, “Goodness, the gaslighting. Common psycho reaction. You know why you’re wanted.”

“Tell me anyway.”

The other sighed and finally relented, “You’re going to jail for murdering your wife, Jane Evergreen.”

The rest of the ride was the most bazaar form of psychological torture I had ever endured. Mourning mixed with guilt and confusion. What had I done during my blackout? What had it done to my mind? I was so delirious that every few buildings we passed looked unfamiliar even though I grew up in this town. Knew every damned corner. Now I knew nothing. Having killed my own wife, I didn’t even know myself.

The arrival at the police station did nothing to calm my nerves. It was pure bedlam. Phones were ringing, papers were flying everywhere. People were getting into confused arguments as if talking past each other. As the two brutes dragged me in, the cop answering the phone seemed on the edge of a nervous breakdown. His hat was tilted, his eyes baggy, and it looked like he had grown a five o’clock shadow and it was only ten in the morning. He hurriedly asked, “What’s the charge?”

One of the two brutes said, “Murder.”

Even with the hefty charge, the guy just nodded as if he was trying to get them out of his hair. They stripped me of my possessions and tossed me into a holding cell. 

“Wait!” I hollered through the bars. “I want my one phone call! I want to call my lawyer.”

A voice laughed from within the cell.

“A lawyer? Why don’t you ask for some Grey Poupon while you’re at it?”

I turned and saw a skinny black guy lounging in the only cot in the holding cell. An oasis of calm in the pure madness around him and it pissed me off.

He continued, “White folk been runnin’ around like they just canceled Friends or some shit. This guy say he ain’t supposed to be in jail. This guy say that guy isn’t supposed to be working here. This guy says he screwin’ that guy’s wife. You know, I’m missin’ my episodes of As the Word Turn, but this shit pretty damn close.”

That’s when I realized, it wasn’t just me whose memory was going crazy. It was everyone’s, but why? It was hard to think among the panic and my “roommate” didn’t make things easier with his constant yammering.

“So you ain’t gettin’ your lawyer. You in the same boat as me. Two words. Court. Appointed.”

My mind was thinking back to the events of the previous day. Could it have something to do with my experiment with mirror neutrons? I tried to arrange my thoughts for a solution as the idiot in the background kept talking over them.

“Court-appointed might as well be a synonym for prosecutor…” he commented. “Motherfucka gonna stroll in late in a damned corduroy suit… Court gonna be all quiet all you gonna hear is that corduroy swishin’... Mother fucka ain’t gonna have a suitcase it’s gonna be one of them Power Puff Girls Lunch Pails...”

“Will you just shut up!” I finally shouted. “I’m trying to think.”

“Tryin’ to think of a way out? Don’t worry about that, bro. I gotcha covered.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t just talk a lot. I’m also a nosy motherfucka’. That means I know that Tony the clerk thinks that Angie the bailiff thinks she knows that Andy knows that BIlly knows that Tony has been screwin’ Sasha in some different reality or somethin’. And if Tony don’t want the shit to hit the fan, he’ll open up our cell right about --”

At that moment, the cell clicked open. I looked to my right to see the aforementioned “Tony” at the door.

As we strolled out the police station, I learned the man’s name is Archie and he was in for armed burglary. A matter that he quibbled over.

“How you gonna arrest me for armed burglary just because you saw my sidepiece on the camera when I went to the house? I wasn’t gonna shoot nobody. That’s the thing about Burgling. You do it when no one’s there. So tell me, brother what were you in for?”

I lowered my head to say it, “Murder.”

“Was she white?”

“Not that it matters, but yes.”

“Oh, yeah, mother fucka. You was about to go a long ways away. They’d uh brought back caning for yo’ ass.’

Just then a black van pulled up and we got in. One of his buddies, he said.

“Now, where are you taking us?”

“I don’t know about you, but my ass is goin’ to Mexico.”

“Mexico?”

“Yeah. Don’t you watch movies? That’s where everybody go!”

He then started to practice the most horrible Spanish I’d ever heard.

“HOLA. SIN-YOR! ABBA INGLEZ “

“It’s pronounced habla. Not like a Swedish pop group from the 80s.”

“Well, I got Duolingo mother fucka. I’ll figure it out.”

Now, knowing the problem, I had a solution. Everyone’s memory was stuck in alternate realities.

“Hold on. Can you drop my off at my lab?”

“Where’s you lab at?”

“On Winslow street.”

“Oh, hell naw. You might as well just said Saskatchewan. That shit way on the other side of town. You goin’ to Mexico witt us!”

‘Mexico! NO! I’ve figured it out. The mirror neutrons escaped into the world. The glass container wasn’t enough to hold them and they scattered throughout the universe. If I can just get to the lab and reverse the polarity --”

“Oh my goodness. This mother fucka goin’ on about neutrons and polarities and shit.”

“You don’t understand. The fate of the free world --”

“Fuck the free world. I’m gonna pick up my shorty and my girl and it’s off to Mexico.”

The van moving farther from hope, I had no choice. 

I opened the door and jumped out.

...

Two hours later, bruised from my fall and exhausted from walking, I finally arrived at my home. I used the key under the mat to go through the front door, slinked on through and across the living room floor and daggers in my thighs I dragged myself up the stairs. Arriving in my bedroom, I opened the nightstand drawer and my eyes lit up like seeing a long lost friend. Some sense of familiarity.

I grabbed the key as if it were my lone anchor to reality and letting go would send me spiraling into a world of chaos. For just a few seconds, I stopped to breathe in the sensation only to be startled by a sound downstairs. I slowly went down to see what the commotion was.

I held my breath upon seeing who it was. My wife. She was alive. 

I desperately ran to her and grabbed her by the face, beholding the brightness of her eyes, rolling my hand through her hair, closely examining the surface of her skin. After our spat that morning, I expected she would recoil in anger. But instead, to my horror, she recoiled in fear.  

My line of sight lowered to see a bewildered look in her eye -- that of a wounded deer. She was cowering. Jane never cowered.

Thoroughly bewildered, I reached out a hand. Her next words shattered me. 

Holding out her palms to shield her face, she said, “Please don’t hit me again.”

I left the house in a fog. My world was falling apart as I put things together. In another reality, the reality that the bounty hunters have in their mind, I had possibly killed my wife. In another reality still, the one my wife was trapped in, I beat her to the point of being terrified. Certainly, I had banged many tables. I had gotten angry, but I had never hit her.

My bereavement, however, was short-lived as a Chevy pick up truck came out of nowhere. With my car nowhere to be found, as it was impounded, I could only make a run for it. I turned the corner and there it was. I turned another and there it was again. Everywhere I went it kept coming and coming slowly like a horror movie villain. 

Finally, I was exhausted and couldn’t run anymore. If I was going to get taken in again, I would put up a fight. The vehicle came to a stop and I readied my fists only to see the driver pop out.

“Archie! Why the hell didn’t you tell me it was you?”

“I was fuckin’ witt ya, man. Ain’t you got no sense of humor. You should’ve seen your face.”

“I’m not in a jokin’ mood with --”

“Yeah yeah yeah. You got nuetrinos and shit to go catch. Whatcha gonna do run around with a big net?”

“It’s neutrons. Mirror neutrons. And I thought you were going to Mexico.” 

“Yeah, well...” his voice turned unusually somber. “I went to go pick up my kid and it’s like she didn’t recognize me. Whatever happenin’ got to her. That shit shook, me man… So tell me what we gotta do to make this right.”

The ride to the lab was all I needed, but he gave me the number to his burner phone just in case. He dropped me off and went on his way, probably waiting for either him or his daughter to change back. 

As I walked up to the door of the lab, I wondered what would happen once I fixed things. Would the memories be wiped away? Would they be replaced? Or would they coexist and two parts of a new whole? The scientific possibilities were racing through my mind -- I just hoped it wasn’t another reality forming.

I put the key into the keyhole and turned like I had done hundreds of times before. But this time something was different: the keyhole didn’t turn. I tried another angle. I tried to force it. Eventually, I figured it must have been an issue of rust I forgot about. I turned the extra hard. I put my back into it. And then key just broke in my hand.

I stood there staring at it until I realized everyone’s memories had been affected by the pulse -- including mine. There was a time when I had a choice between working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory or Pennington Labs. It was a close call, but I chose Oak Ridge. Or so I thought. Apparently, in this reality, I chose Pennington which was halfway across town.

I fumbled to pull the excess remnants of the key out of the keyhole. Would it be any good? I would not have time to find out as a booming voice screamed, “Hey stop!”

It was one of the men in the grey suits. They had probably tailed me and figured out where I was going. The only thing left to do was make a run for it, but a bullet split through my chest and knocked me to the floor before I had a chance. There was one last hope. I pulled out my phone to call Archie.

“Archie,” I said, “Think you can pull off one last break-in?”

The two brutes closing in on me, I told Archie where he could find the instructions at the lab. Then, I passed out.

...

I awoke to the eyes of my wife. They were kind eyes that were no longer scared of me but still had their distance as she sat beside my hospital bed.

“I’m sorry I left you, Luke,” she finally said. “I never really cheated on you. I just said it because I was mad. I needed to cool off. My mother dying and all.”

I breathed and finally said, “No, Jane. You should leave me.”

“Is this about you being a wifebeater in another reality? It’s not you, Luke. It’s another reality.”

“But what if, Jane… What if. I don’t want to lose you even if it means I have to lose you.”

I could tell from her silence, she was pondering the same thing I was. Wrestling with those foreign thoughts.

“I’ll grant you that divorce and seek counseling. Maybe we’ll marry someday. May we’ll marry other people. Maybe I won’t marry again….”

I think of her constantly. The way we cuddled in bed. Of her unending mercy toward me. The way she’d listen to me ramble about technical terms she gave two squats about. And I’m saddened.

But I also think of Archie escaping to Mexico. The cash I sent him to help him realize his dream. I think about him going home to his daughter and her eyes lighting up in recognition. His eyes returning the warmth.

I think of that and then I smile.