The Solar Trip

Some people, when they find themselves in an unlucky situation, never contemplate what decision had led them there and fall into a frenzy of uttered 'should have's and 'had I only done so and so's. Other people, like Hugo Grey, cannot escape the temptation of imagining a better, more fortunate, outcome and also feel the need to voice such 'necessary information' to others. Aside from the small, everyday misfortunes, there are permanent regrets that he repeatedly complains about, because had he made different decisions, he would most certainly not be in such a miserable situation as he is in now. For Hugo is unemployed at the moment and has been so for the past 10 years. As a young man he had his own successful company and had realised his dreams of a big house and expensive car, but unfortunately he had made business with the wrong sort of people and was left completely ruined after they've swindled him out of all his money. So, he had to sell his house and move back in with his parents, who had a separate, tiny flat in the basement.

Another big regret of his is that he did not stay in the military. Had he stayed, he would soon be able to retire and would get a nice pension to live off comfortably. Back then the thought of having to serve in Afghanistan for 6 months had scared him, but now in retrospect that would have been a fair trade.

Although he loves his two children, he would have been better off marrying another woman. She always blamed him for everything but he has learned to not get irritated by whatever malicious words she said, for he knows that she is an authoritarian, unable to accept that not everyone lives according to her own principles and habits.

How different his life could have been had he made better decisions, but in all honesty, even though his decisions led to his current state it was certainly never his own fault. He had left the military because someone had talked to him about all the disadvantages of being a soldier and the perks of being a businessman. Thus he left and started a company, but how could he have known that someone would take advantage of his goodheartedness? And how could he have known that she was some lunatic woman? Anyways, his life is miserable because of other people’s interceptions in it.

Like so many evenings, he had fallen asleep in front of the TV, knowing that he would wake up with an aching back, but he could hardly help it when he was always exhausted from doing whatever he was doing that day. So, he woke up on that old couch in front of the flickering TV screen, wondering what time it was despite it not really mattering. He reached for the remote control to switch off the machine but the programme caught his attention. It was a documentary about places with bizarre legends. The one they were currently talking about was a solarium. Hugo laughed to himself when he heard them say that this solarium was a portal to a parallel universe. That’s ridiculous. He usually enjoyed such shows because he was certain that the government and scientists kept secrets from the public for whatever reason, but a portal to a parallel universe in a solarium? No way.

The programme then showed the solarium that supposedly had such a power and Hugo laughed again. It was the studio he visited frequently and he had never gone to a parallel universe, at least not when he was awake. (Falling asleep on the tanning bed was a bad habit of his.) 

He switched off the TV and went to bed, but the story of the programme kept bothering him during his sleep. He dreamed about lying on the tanning bed and being swallowed by its light. He flew through the universe at light speed, ending up on a planet full of strange animals and demon-like humans. When he awoke in the morning he tried to forget all about the tanning studio but the thought of it bothered him for many days and he tried to research it in the dark corners of the world wide web to no avail. 

On a particularly cloudy and triste day, he deceived himself by deciding that it was time for a tanning session anyways and since it was the studio he usually visited, he could enquire after the truth. So, he drove his 20-year-old Volkswagen to ‘The Solar Trip’ and upon arriving, while viewing the name above the entrance door, he realised how fitting the name would be if travelling to a parallel universe were actually possible. 

He entered the studio and was greeted by his favourite employee Anna. They had a bit of small talk before she asked if he wanted the usual room. He hesitated for a moment and then answered in a truly old-man-joking kind of way.

‘If it were possible, then this universe would be empty, right?’ His laughed hurt Annas ears before it turned into a smoker’s cough. ‘Recently I saw a TV programme that claimed this place was a portal that could make people travel to a parallel universe’, he laughed again as if he thought it was utterly ridiculous. Hugo actually did find it completely ridiculous but the conspirator in him was hoping that it there was more to this story.

Anna laughed as well. ‘Because of that silly programme, a number of people have visited to go to a parallel universe. I must say that, although we have made profit thanks to the programme, some disappointed costumers were rather bothersome.’ Hugo voiced his sympathy.

‘Of course I didn’t take it seriously, but I was curious anyways. I’ll take the usual room then’, he said.

‘Sure, here you go.’ She handed him a card and then proceeded to type something on her computer.

With a ‘see you later’, Hugo turned towards the corridor and walked towards room number 8. But to his surprise, when he held the card to the lock, it blinked red. He tried again a few times, when he realised that the card looked different than the card he had been given before. Instead of a room number it had the words ‘Tau Ceti’ written on it. ‘Tau Ceti?’, Hugo thought, ‘that’s a sun that is similar to ours in another solar system. Why did Anna give me the wrong card?’ He was about to go back to the front desk and tell Anna, when it occurred to him that it might not be a mistake at all. Maybe Anna gave him another card on purpose because he inquired after the portal. He turned to look in the other direction. He knew that there were ten rooms in total but he had never realised that there were more than ten doors. At the end of the corridor was an eleventh door. 

Slowly he walked towards it, nervous about what might be behind that door. He stopped and read ‘Tau Ceti’ at the spot where the other rooms had numbers. The lock blinked green when he held the card in front of it.

There was nothing extraordinary about this room. Nothing that distinguished it from the others at first glance. Only the digital control panel to adjust the tanning settings was bigger than in the other rooms. Instead of tanning options, the screen showed a sentence: ‘I want to go to a world…’ Underneath were three options: 

‘…without my biggest regret.’

‘…with wealth.’

‘…with love.’

The choice was easy for Hugo. Without his biggest regret he would definitely have money and love as well. He pressed the first button which resulted in the display to show a loading screen and a technical melody sounded through the room. After a few seconds the display showed ‘ready’ and the light of the tanning bed turned on. It was a dark purple light. He removed his clothes and was pleasantly surprised that the tanning bed actually turned warm once he lied down on it.

For a few moments nothing happened, but then a wave of fatigue rushed through his body. In his dream, he saw all the different colours of the universe as he floated through a spiral of star dust, slowly gaining speed and then crashing right into the burning sun.

He woke up feeling a little dizzy. His surroundings were familiar and yet completely foreign to his eyes. He sat up in his bed, feeling much lighter than usual and thought for a moment about what had happened. He has this vague memory of the solarium but he also remembers having dinner by himself while watching the Formula 1 race in the living room downstairs. Curiously similar to his actual life. Before Hugo made his trip to this parallel universe, he thought that he wouldn’t know anything about this other life, but strangely enough, his real life seemed more like a dream than this one. 

He gave up trying to make sense of it and stood up. He was wearing nothing but underwear on his legs, so he immediately noticed that something was different. One of his shins was full of scars from his foot to his knee with some looking like they recovered from serious burns. Suddenly a vision of war filled his head and he heard faint explosions and cries that triggered a feeling of anxiety.

It only lasted for a few seconds but it cost him a lot of energy, so he had to stand up again with effort. Another shock overcame him when he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked thinner but healthier and his hair was styled differently, but his face seemed to have suffered from his longer military career as well. It also had some scars and burn marks. He realised that he never chose his biggest regret but that the tanning bed decided his biggest regret for him. 

Even if his time in the military was harder than he had expected, he knew that he had a wife and a son in this life and felt thrilled to see them. He walked down the stairs and was proud that he was able to afford such a nice and big house in this life. 

In the kitchen was Hugo’s wife Sarah. They had been married for 18 years and had an 18-year-old son named Leo. What Hugo didn’t realise yet is that his marriage was not very successful.

‘Good morning, love’, he said enthusiastically. It has been too long since he has been with a woman that the thought of having a wife excited him. She was not exactly his type but she was not ugly and he thought that he could get used to her. 

‘Love? Is that a joke?’ Sarah laughed. ‘Not sure when you last called me that. Is it a special day or something?’ She said without ever properly looking at him. Her body language suggested to him that they were not very intimate with each other. He thought hardly about what he knew about their marriage and slowly realised that, in this life, too, he did not have a happy relationship.

‘Hugo?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re always daydreaming’, she said with a roll of her eyes, ‘I said: do you want to come with me when I pick up Leo?’

‘Pick him up from where?’ His mouth was faster than his memory, for as soon as he spoke the knowledge of his son’s drug addiction materialised. Sarah looked at him with an astonished and disappointed expression, but before she could say anything, he corrected himself.

‘Sorry, sorry, love. I… I guess I didn’t sleep so well. I’m a bit slow today. Of course you’re picking him up from rehab.’

A wave of sadness washed over him as he remembered all the times he found his son in delirious states at home or when Leo didn’t come back home for many days and eventually showed up completely famished and senseless. He had made a better career choice in this life but he failed to raise his child well. Elisabeth and Sophia came to his mind and their memory seemed fictitious and unreal. The thought of ever forgetting his real daughters saddened him more than any horrible incidents concerning Leo, despite having a much clearer recollection of him. Most of their lives, Elisabeth and Sophia hadn’t lived with him, maybe that’s why they became such accomplished young women. 

Hugo told her that he would come and then that was the end of their conversation. He made some more attempts to engage her but the only thing she said to him was to stop calling her ‘love’ and so he stoped trying. She wasn’t being particularly mean; he could tell that that was just how things were between them. Although he was disappointed by this outcome, he didn’t really care about her.

An hour later, they took the car to pick up their son and Hugo realised that these sudden visions and noises of war were a rather frequent occurrence. ‘Even in this life I’m mentally unstable’, he thought. Everyone looks up to and admires soldiers for their work, so naturally Hugo thought that a life in which he had stayed in the military would be the most prestigious but he now realised that he was wrong. A couple times during the 30 minute car ride, he had sudden anxiety attacks and the noise inside the car amplified making it impossible to hear anything. Sarah was very tense while driving and that explained why she had tried to tell him to stay at home. She hadn’t expected that he would actually come. 

When they arrived Leo was already standing outside, waiting for them. Leo’s appearance and mannerisms were completely foreign to Hugo, so when Sarah exited the car and took the frail young man into here arms, Hugo was quite surprised because this kid was just a stranger to him. He, too, walked to his son and gave him a hug that was mutually uncomfortable for both of them. Again, Hugo tried to make smalltalk but like his wife his son was passive towards him. The car ride back was equally as challenging and when they came home, Leo immediately escaped to his own room. A part of Hugo was relieved about that, because he felt drained from all the new sensations and he hadn’t really slept since he had made the trip through the portal. 

Before going to bed, he gave it another chance and knocked onto Leo’s door. There was no answer but he felt the authority to open the door anyways. Leo was playing some violent video game on his PC and from his aggressive reaction it was obvious that he must have lost the game. Hugo entered and was intrigued by his son’s desktop setup. 

‘Wow, impressive setup’, he said to break the ice.

‘Is that supposed to be self-flattery?’, Leo answered with a laugh. Hugo had been the one to help create Leo’s gaming corner as a way to distract him from his withdrawal symptoms. At least there seemed to be something connecting father and son, but even though Hugo had found a way to bond with Leo, he couldn’t help but think of the many hours he spent setting up the computers of his daughters and how sweet they always were to him despite his many flaws. Again, he was overcome by an anxiety but it was not because of war, but because he realised that he might never see his daughters again. That night, he lay awake for many hours, realising that if he were to stay in this universe forever, it would mean that they did not exist. How can he go back?

Once he couldn’t bare his sleeplessness anymore, he turned on the TV that was mounted on the wall opposite the bed. As soon as the flickering light filled the room, he knew the answer to his problem. It was the same programme that he had seen in his home universe. The one that claimed the solarium was a portal to another universe. True it was but Hugo had no desire to stay here any longer as he had come to the realisation that he had been tempted to regret too easily in order to avoid taking responsibility for his own life. It was not too late to change himself; from now on he would not think about the ‘what if’s and ‘had I only’s, but he would think about his future and make the best of it. 

The next day was especially cold and rainy and just like 24 hours ago, he greeted Anna, inquired about the portal and saw that she did not give him the key to room number 8. When he turned on the display, he had only one option that said ‘home’ and that’s where he went.