Convergence

Kurt sat on a bench outside the main hall of the University and watched the students and professors make their way across the campus. He watched the way some students walked in groups while others hurriedly swerved around their classmates, obviously late for something. Some students looked professional and put together with bright, eager eyes—ready for the day. Some of them looked like they’d just rolled out of bed, their sleepy eyes drooping and fighting to stay awake. It seemed like they were all drinking coffee out of paper cups. The professors were all carrying paper cups too, as well as leather bags.

Kurt marvelled at how things had certainly changed, but not so much as he’d imagined. Sure, the hair was different—women wore it in sleek ponytails with long, thin strands of bangs and the men all seemed to wear it short and spiky on top. Some had blond tips, which Kurt thought looked ridiculous, while also feeling a little conspicuous with his long, feathered hair and big sideburns. The only facial hair he saw were goatees and soul patches. Nobody had a moustache like he did.

The fashion was different too, but not as much as he’d expected. Jeans still reigned supreme (he figured they would have, which is why he chose to wear them), but he didn’t expect them to be as baggy as they were. Most of the men were wearing thick sweaters with various stripes and lines on them while the women wore thin long sleeves, some of them so long that they covered the tops of their jeans and some so short that their bellies were showing.

A few people were wearing plaid, but they were oversized and open with white t-shirts underneath, instead of fitted and tucked in like his was. There wasn’t a single pair of cowboy boots in sight, which made him a little self-conscious. He tucked his feet under the bench.

The world also seemed to look the same. There were more buildings and more people and the cars were small and round compared to the big land-boats he was used to, but overall, the changes weren’t as jarring as he’d imagined. Kurt was thinking about what had changed with computers when a man in his fifties caught his eye. He had thinning grey hair styled in a comb over, small, square-framed glasses and a salt and pepper beard. He was wearing a tweed jacket, and just like everybody else, was sipping on coffee in a paper cup. Jesus, Kurt thought, he looks familiar. He kinda looks like Dad. A little fatter, maybe, and a little balder, but...

The professor was walking just a few feet in front of Kurt when he turned his head and their eyes met. Kurt tried to look away casually, but the man stopped dead and stared wide-eyed. Kurt looked back at him and the professor took a step back and dropped his cup on the ground, splashing coffee all over his trousers and leather shoes. The spill broke the man’s concentration and made him jump back for a second. He glanced at the puddle on the ground, but his eyes shot back to Kurt’s as if the coffee were an inconsequential leaf blowing in the breeze, momentarily catching his attention.

This is weird, Kurt thought as the man’s eyes bored into his. I feel like I know him, but I don’t know where from. He seems to know me. Maybe he remembers me and thinks I should look thirty years older. Kurt stood up, and the man took another step back. “I’m sorry,” Kurt said. The sound of Kurt’s voice seemed to make the colour drain from the man’s face. “But, do I know you?”

The man stared for a second longer, his mouth hanging open, before he finally closed it. His expression changed—he looked angry. He started towards Kurt. “What are you doing here?!” the man asked in a stage-whisper, checking over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking.

Kurt’s breath caught in his throat. The man’s voice—it was Kurt’s voice. Older, but still his. And the man’s face. Oh my God, it’s MY face! “I—”

“How did you get here?” the man—older Kurt—asked.

“I don’t—”

Older Kurt held his hand up to him. “Stop. We... We can’t talk here.” He reached into his pocket with a shaking hand and fished out a key ring. “The silver key—the one that says Klassen on it—it’s the key to my office. Third floor, E building, room three-fourteen. Wait fifteen minutes before you go there and lock the door. I’ll meet you back there in an hour. There’s good scotch in one of my desk drawers. I suggest you have a couple of sips.” Older Kurt started to pass the key over and Kurt’s hand seemed to float up without his control to grab it.

The man snatched the key into his fist and pointed at Kurt (My God, it’s MY HAND! Kurt thought).

“Do. Not. Answer. The. Door,” he said. “For anybody. Got it?”

Kurt nodded.

“I’ll knock ‘shave and a haircut,’ Ok?”

Kurt nodded again.

Older Kurt handed him the keys, carefully so that their hands wouldn’t touch. He stared for a second before shaking his head. “I have a guest speaker today, so I can’t cancel my class.” He looked at his watch. “SHIT! I’m late!” He hesitated, staring in disbelief before shaking his head again and turning to go. “One hour!” he called over his shoulder as he rushed away.

Kurt sank to the bench, watching the man—him—walk away. This isn’t right, he thought. Something got fucked up. How? He sat there for twenty minutes, his mind racing and staring at the keys in disbelief, before he shook his head (he—we—both shake our heads to bring us back) and checked his watch. He got up to go, drifting through the campus in a daze, sticking out like a sore thumb in his cowboy boots, feathered hair and moustache. After another twenty minutes of what seemed like aimless wandering, he found himself in front of three-fourteen in the E building. He remembered that it used to be Dr. Benson’s office, once upon a time. Now, stencilled in gold letters, was his name: Dr. Kurt Metcalfe. Below that, it said, “Department Head: Physics.” He made sure no one was around, unlocked and opened the door, and stepped inside. He closed it slowly behind him and locked it. “This isn't right,” he said aloud, surveying the room, looking at the various degrees and accreditations hung on the wall, recognizing the same ones he had from MIT. He looked at the chalkboard that was covered in equations, hastily scribbled in his hand. “This isn’t right.”

He wandered over to the desk and sat down in the big, plush leather chair. He started to reach for the bottom drawer of the desk, thinking, If I kept a bottle of scotch anywhere, it would be here, so it stands to reason... when he noticed a photo frame. Kurt reached out slowly and picked it up. It was older Kurt, standing next to a young, red-headed woman in a cap and gown and another, older woman who also had red hair. He didn’t know who the older woman was, but it wasn’t Anna and that hurt his heart. He couldn’t imagine being in love with anybody else.

Knock knock-knock-knock knock... Knock-Knock

“Shave and a haircut,” he said to himself as he stood and crossed the room to unlock the door. Older Kurt pushed his way in, barely letting the door open, closing it as soon as his whole body was inside.

“My class ended early. The students had hardly any questions for Dr. Singh—it was embarrassing. Did anybody see you?” the older man asked, panic on his face.

“No, there wasn’t anybody in the hall when I came up.”

“Good. This floor is usually pretty quiet.” They stared at each other for a second before older Kurt pointed at the chair in front of the desk. “Please.”

They started to go for their seats when Kurt realized he was holding the photo frame still. “Oh,” he said, handing the frame over. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. They’re beautiful.”

Older Kurt took the frame and set it in its place on the desk. “Thank you,” he said. “Do... Do you recognize the older woman?”

Kurt sat down and shook his head. “No, I don’t. Sorry.”

Older Kurt cleared his throat. “It’s all right. I’m sure you could guess, but that’s my wife, Susan, and our daughter Amanda in between us. She just graduated high school.”

“Congratulations,” Kurt said. He opened his mouth to speak more, but couldn’t think of anything to say, which he didn’t think was possible. It seemed, though, that the older Kurt was at a similar loss for words.

They sat quietly for a minute, staring at each other, when the older Kurt seemed to come to his senses. “Whisky!” he said. “You didn’t find the whisky?” He bent down and opened the drawer that the younger guessed the bottle and glasses would be in.

“Oh, uh, no, I didn’t. I started to look—I was actually gonna start in that drawer—”

“Great minds think alike,” the older Kurt said, producing a bottle and two glasses.

Kurt let out a polite laugh before continuing while older Kurt pulled the cork stopper out with a cheery little pop. “I was gonna start with that drawer when I noticed the picture.”

“I suppose that would distract me too,” the older man said while pouring a healthy couple of ounces and sliding the glass across the desk to the younger man. He poured another one while he said, “1973?”

“I don’t get it,” the younger said, taking the glass. “I should have come back from missing for twenty-five years, not looking at an older version of myself.” He took a sip of the whisky. “I mean, what the fuck is happening here?! It’s just time dilation!”

“Did you—for lack of a better term—‘leave’ in 1973?” the older asked.

“Yeah, how did you guess?”

“Because I almost tried myself. I had the plans. I just couldn’t get the funding, or figure out how to power it. How did you do it?”

“I tried getting funding from everywhere. The military, NASA. Nobody would give it to me. So I went to the Russians.”

“The Russians?! Jesus. Why?”

“They’re the only ones that would. They were excited to try and beat us on another front. Didn’t take much convincing. Took them a year and a half to build it. They wanted to send one of their own, but I insisted that I go. I decided that if anyone was gonna be spaghettified, it would be me.”

“But what made you got to the Russians?”

Kurt slammed his hand on the desk. “Tell me what the fuck is happening here! Please! You know something I don’t!”

“Keep your goddamn voice down!” the older Kurt snapped back. “We can’t have anybody coming in here!”

“Sorry, I... I’m just confused. I was so careful. I did the math over and over and I don’t understand what happened.”

The older Kurt leaned forward. “I was trying to get the funding to go too and couldn’t. I couldn’t find anybody willing to go either, so I told every potential benefactor that I would volunteer. They all thought I was crazy and said no. I gave up trying when I met Susan.” He sat back in his chair. “Then, seven or eight years later, this Turkish physicist, Ender Karakaya—have you heard of him?” The younger shook his head.

“Brilliant man. Died a couple of years ago. Anyway, he theorized that black holes were like doorways between parallel universes. As if they thin the fabric that separates them.”

“But I didn’t create a black hole. Just a—”

“—Super gravity time dilation machine,” the older finished. “I know. I’m getting to that.”

“Sorry,” the younger said, sitting back in his chair.

“Karakaya’s theory—or convergence theory, some call it—hypothesized that black holes are designated doorways between parallel universes. Ones that are supposed to exist—that nature intended. Like rivers that flow separately but connect in very specific places and create delicately balanced ecosystems. Karakaya thought that if we could create our own black hole, it would interrupt that delicate balance, like digging a trench to connect two rivers further up or downstream than they’re meant to, or maybe even connecting rivers that weren’t ever supposed to connect.”

“You’re still not telling me—”

“The super gravity pierced the veil between our universes! It was too much, and you fell through.”

The younger Kurt’s face was white. He set the glass down on the desk with trembling hands, making it rattle a little. “You think I travelled ‘forward in time’ and to a parallel universe?”

The older leaned forward. “I don’t think. I know. What else would explain two of the same person sitting here?”

“Oh my God,” Kurt said, sitting back in his chair. “Oh, Jesus.”

“It gets worse.”

“How could it be worse? It’s already worse!”

“Karakaya thought that once that connection was made, it would compromise the integrity of the fabric keeping the universes separate. Which could mean that non-natural black hole—or black hole adjacent—phenomena that compromise that veil could conceivably make all the parallel universes converge into a single one.”

“So, what you’re saying is—”

“What I’m saying is, if you dug a trench between two rivers that didn’t exist, it would start as a trench, but then it would become a creek, then a stream, then its own river. And then that river would grow and deepen until every drop of water on land leads to that river. And the river at the end of that one—”

“Jesus. It gets overwhelmed—overflows.” Kurt thought he was gonna be sick.

“That’s what Karakaya thought, and I’m inclined to agree with him.”

“What did Karakaya think would happen if all the parallel universes overwhelmed a single one?”

Older Kurt took off his glasses to clean them. “He figured that with all that heat and gravity in one localized universe, it would create an infinitely massive black hole that tried to swallow itself, like a snake eating its own tail. Infinitely.”

Kurt stood up and started pacing. “How could I have known? Or prevented it?”

“I don’t know,” the older said, stroking his beard. “Karakaya thought that there was no way to prevent it from happening or to account for it. If you created enough artificial gravity, you were rolling the dice.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, each lost in thought.

“How did you do it? How did you power it?” the older Kurt finally asked.

The younger sat back down. “Thorium. And a hell of a lot of it.”

“No kidding. What was it like?”

“Strange. And beautiful. It only took fifteen minutes for me, according to my watch, at least.”

“How were you planning on proving that it’s really you?”

“I made a dental impression that the Soviets—”

“They’re not Soviets anymore.”

“Really? Wow. Anyway, they kept the impression. So when I ‘came back,’ I could prove it because they would have a twenty-seven-year-old impression that was an exact match. Do you know an Anna Marcus?”

“Anna Marcus...” the older said, thinking while pouring himself another drink. “I—did we go to high school with her?”

Kurt nodded. “I guess you could say she was my Susan. We were engaged. She died in a car crash. That’s why I fought so hard to build the machine and why I volunteered. I figured I had nothing left to lose and everything to gain. I wonder if she’s alive here.” He wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” the older said. “There are infinite parallel universes. Maybe you can take solace in the chance that you and Anna are together somewhere else.”

“Thank you, but that doesn’t make me feel better. What do we do?”

The older took his glasses off and tossed them onto the desk, placed his forehead in his hands and began to massage it. God, we are the same, the younger thought.

“I don’t know,” the older finally said, looking up. “I don’t know. We hope that no other version of us—or anyone, for that matter—goes or went or whatever through with it. I think that’s all we can do.” They sat in silence for a few more minutes before the older spoke again. “There are so many versions of our life out there—you being here proves it. So many possibilities and differences in history. Not just ours, but world history. Who won the pennant the year before you travelled through? 1972?”

There was a knock at the door and both men’s attentions snapped to the door. There was another knock. The older Kurt got up and slipped to the door, but he didn’t open it. “What do I do?” he mouthed to the younger, who just shrugged.

There was another knock. “Hello?” came a voice through the glass. A voice that made them both bring their hands to their mouths. “Hello? I’m looking for a Dr. Kurt Metcalfe.”

Kurt’s body was numb, but he managed to stand up. The voice coming through the door was the same as his. The same as the older Kurt’s. “Hello? Dr. Metcalfe? I could hear you in there. I need to talk to you,” came the voice—their voice again.

“Just a second,” the older Kurt croaked. He reached out slowly and unlocked the door with a trembling hand. Then he started for the knob, but hesitated, looking back at the younger Kurt, who just stared.

Finally, older Kurt put his hand on the knob and started to open the door.