The Anomoly

“My people are dying. We need your help.”

           The traveler always looks weary, Amina notices. Every time the traveler visits, there is exhaustion at the forefront of her eyes. The traveler doesn’t always say the same thing. Sometimes it is, “Please, help.” Other times she begins casually, “Hello, my name is Nisha.” Once, she even tried to kidnap Amina.

           “Didn’t you hear me? My people are dying. We need your help.”

           Amina is sitting behind the circulation desk at a small library, she is carefully cataloguing the book returns of the day.

           “Amina. I am begging.”

           “You always beg.”

           “What?”

           “No matter which version of you arrives here, no matter how you start, it doesn’t take that long until you beg.”

           “Am—”

           “You’re sopping wet.”

           “It’s raining outside.”

           Amina hums in response, not moving her eyes. She feels bad for Nisha sometimes, for all the Nishas she’s encountered. The first time they'd met was in college, their junior year. They’d fallen madly in love, a Syrian and an Indian — it was not meant to be easy. Nisha’s mother found out that she’d been seeing a girl, that her beloved and only daughter was a disgraceful fucking dyke. Nisha had committed suicide less than two years after she’d first met Amina. An implosion, but Amina graduated on time. She got her masters. She left New York for a small town in Maine to be a librarian.

           “This is the seventh time you’ve visited this year,” Amina tries to fill the brief silence her thoughts had caused. “To ask me the same thing.”

           “In every universe I am suffering, my people are suffering. You’ve said no seven times this year?”

           “I wish you understood me more, when we were together that was the only gripe I had about you,” Amina smiles, plops her book down on the stack before reaching into the basket. “Although, I know I shouldn’t really expect you to know me beyond a file.”

           “We were together?”

           “In this universe, yes. For one year, four months, and thirteen days.”

           “You exist only here. There is no way for me to know you beyond a file.”

           “I know, you’ve told me several times.”

           “You’re the Anomaly. Your existence is only in this universe. Alone. Your are abilities gone to waste here — you should be helping everyone, everything, that you possibly can.”

           “No ability is ever really wasted. You used to love to paint. I imagine there is another you, in another universe, painting instead of being at war. Painting instead of endlessly and infinitely sent to seek me out.”

           “In another time maybe,” Nisha frustratedly clenches her jaw. “Perhaps when I am not trying to end mad slaughter and genocide.”

           “Do you live in the future? The last six versions of you all came from the future of some kind.”

           “Time doesn’t work like that. This Earth is suspended here on this timeline, it does not mean all other Earths have to be on the same timeline. Your present is not the only one that matters.”

           “I suppose, but you’re traveling through dimensions. It’s hardly 2021 where you’re from. Besides, Nisha…If there is only one of me, and I am here, does that not make this Earth special? The only Earth that matters?”

           “Hardly.” Nisha repeats Amina’s drawled hardly.

           “Look. Nisha. I want to help. But I can’t. I cannot go through another war.”

           “Another…” Nisha frowns with confusion. Slowly it turns to anger. Her soft another elevates into a loud lecture. “So, you’ve helped another version of me in another universe, but you can’t help me? You can’t help an entire Earth of people because you don’t want to see war again? I came all this way! I’m drenched! I have billions of people relying on me Amina! I don’t know you…Is that why you’re doing this? An immature revenge?”

           Nisha’s face is no longer desperate. It is stretched with furiousness — unadulterated anger and fear. She reaches forward with a gloved hand, grabbing the book Amina is cataloguing. The ends of the pages are singed because of Nisha’s gloves. They must be made of metallic fibers — a device to deliver a deadly blow of fire to any unsuspecting enemy.

           “Put the book down. You’re being rash.”

           Nisha throws the book behind Amina’s head. It hits the shelf with a shocking force, toppling the flimsy plywood structure. Books crash down, not many, but the violent loudness is enough to startle Amina. Pages of the book that Nisha threw are burning, flying from the old and weathered glue binding of paperbacks. Nisha reaches for Amina’s collar, clenches it between a hand radiating an uncomfortable, threatening heat. Her face comes millimeters close to Amina’s. There is a scent on her breath, but Amina can’t place it.

           “Don’t you wonder why they send you?” Amina asks, nervously navigating this Nisha’s unexpected approach. “Don’t you wonder why this is your burden?”

           “You’re brave for a coward Amina. I’ll give you that little. For someone faced with blistering heat, you are unwavering. In another universe, I would admire your adamant nature. So self-assured.”

           “In this universe you did. You admired me for my stubbornness among many other things.”

           “In this universe I am not dying, Amina. In this universe people are not dying.”

           “In this universe you are dead.”

---

           There are many things that the Nishas scattered across multiple universes do not know. There is information lost in trying to cultivate the most persuasive argument. Nisha does not know why she is always chosen to travel across universes to find Amina. Nisha does not know who Amina is outside of her status as the Anomaly. Nisha does not know — sadly — what she is fighting for, whom she protects.

           Amina wants to help. She does. But Amina knows the danger of fighting for causes that are not one’s own. “I am a refugee.”

           “They told me there is no war here.”

           “There is war everywhere.”

           “You don’t live like a refugee. You are a librarian in a wealthy town of fairly wealthy people. You have modern — at least, modern to you — technology. Clothes. You have housing. Warmth and safety.”

           “I came here thirteen years ago. From a Syrian refugee camp in Egypt. I was a refugee.”

           After the blow she’d delivered Nisha, they had moved to the basement of the library. Underneath the rows of shelves, there was a small apartment. Nisha assumes that Amina lived here. Her possessions are scattered across the small studio. A bed in the left-hand corner. A train car kitchen leads to the living room on the right end of the apartment — that’s where the stairs had led them. Amina had brought the books down, placed them at a workbench in the corner of the living room. She sits at the desk, working slowly to fix the books that Nisha had damaged. Nisha is reclined on the loveseat, reeling from the knowledge of her own death. They face away from one another, isolated.

           “Have you told me? The other six Nishas? That they died?”

           “Only my Nisha has died. They are all alive.”

           “Right.”

           “I want you to understand that you are not dead.”

           “I thought you were lying to me about having known Nisha — me. They told me that you’d be cunning and deceitful.”

           “Who’s to say I am not?”

           “I know you’re not. They also used to tell me that it was important that it was I who went to get you. They said it was because this was the one world in which you lived — the one world in which I never existed. It’s easy to fabricate a love story. There is no reason for you to have told me that I — that your Nisha — died.”

           “Death is difficult. It could have been my cunning and deceitful plan all along.”

           “I’d like to think I can tell apart lies from pain. You looked pained at the mention of her death.”

           “I did not look pained at the mention of our love story?”

           “You looked no different than you did the minutes before you told the love story. I didn’t believe you.”

           “No. I just think you were always meant to never believe me. Of all the seven of you that have come here, no one actually began by asking me what made me so disinclined to help.”

           “What is it?”

           “What is what.”

           “What is it that makes you disinclined to help.”

           “Before I told you what had happened, do you remember what I asked? I asked if you knew why they send you, why this is your burden. I know now that you are a bit more informed than the others, but I want you to answer this. Do you know why they need me so badly?”

           “You are the anomaly. No one really knows why you exist singularly; no one knows what that actually means. They just think it’s a sign that you can deliver us.”

           “How do you know that I can help? I am from a time hundreds of years before yours. I don’t fight. I’m from a small town in fucking Maine of all places! I organize old fishing books! You don’t even know why you need me.”

           “You’re the Anomaly. That’s why we need you.”

           “What does the Anomaly do? Nisha. What can the Anomaly do?”

           “We don’t know.”

           “You never know.”

           “Amina. You are only one. Here you had a Nisha. There are universes — millions of fucking universes — where Nisha exists. You, and only you, are here. Could you entertain for a moment, Amina, that you are here to help? That you are special for a reason, that you have a calling that can guide you, that can give you purpose? You could be everything that every Nisha in every universe is looking for. You could be the end to thousands of wars. You could be the end to this war — if only one, Amina, you could end mine.”

           “What is the war, Nisha? What — and who — are you fighting for?”

           “It’s what all wars are fought over. Land. Resources —”

           “Power.”

           “Yes, power too. But I’m fighting to end it. I am fighting for myself, for my people.”

           “Then who is ‘they?’ You’ve said that they told you about me, that they think that I can help. So, who is ‘they?’”

           Nisha is silent. She thinks — Amina believes that this is the first time that this Nisha has thought before speaking — and she speaks. “They are simply people, Amina. Tyrannical governments and rich overlords playing with us like puppets, that is who we are fighting. It is who we all ultimately fight. I fight for — no, with — the suffering masses. I am not the face of a revolution, of course, I report to somebody. But they? They are the billions of people that think you can save them.”

           “Come here.” Amina quietly gestures for Nisha to come to the worktable. Nisha obliges. She sees a stack of fixed, whole books on the left side; on the right are burnt pages and torn novels.

           “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so violently. These aren’t your books.”

           “It’s alright,” Amina’s shoulders lift in a nonchalant shrug. “It’s nothing that can’t be repaired.”

           Amina places a damaged book at the center of the desk. Around it, she arranges any pages that fell out. With a swift motion of her hand, and an unintelligible phrase under her breath, the book is whole again. Back to the state it was when it was originally returned to the library.

           “You fix things?”

           “I’m a healer.”

           Realization dawns on Nisha’s face.

           “My mother came from a line of healers. Each eldest daughter in her family line had an ability to heal. Inanimate objects are easiest — they are the first of what we learn. People are difficult. When the war in Syria began taking the lives of those closest to me, I was a child. I watched my mother mend broken bones, close wounds, even resuscitate those whose lungs were crushed by cement. I was still early in my learning then. It wasn’t until my mother and I were in the camps that I was taught how to heal people. It was paper cuts, then hurt fingers, then scratches on girls’ thighs, then bullet wounds, then…. I did everything I could to help.

           “There are limits, of course. When my mother got gravely ill, lung cancer from toxic shrapnel, I could not ever fully heal her. I can’t bring people back from the dead. I can’t will someone to live longer than their time. When you died, when I found you dead, I tried. But it does not work.”

           Nisha places a hand on Amina’s shoulder. Her statement is not above the loudness of a whisper. “You are indispensable.”

           “I am selfish.”

           Amina swivels the chair around, ending the brief moment of contact between the two. She stands, face to face with Nisha. “I can’t do it again. I do not want to do it again. Every time they send you, they test me. I have lost everyone in my life Nisha. And after I met you, I finally thought I had a love that would last. You died too. Every time you beg, every desperate plea you make for me to help you there is a hidden promise that I won’t be alone again.”

           “You won’t. There are people you would like. Technology of great use. We have libraries a hundred times the size of this shack! You could have everything you wanted. You could have me!”

           “But I wouldn’t. I would have another version of you. I would be alone. Again. After years of helping people and seeing horrible things. Again. All to just be proxy in a war that has nothing to do with me. Again.”

           “Amina.” The traveler always looks weary, Amina notices. Every time the traveler visits, there is desperation at the forefront of her eyes. “My people are dying. We need your help.”

           “They don’t have to be your people. You can be selfish too…”

           “I—”

           “Just stay. Abandon your post. Stay here, live without war or obligation or duty. Live for yourself — you have the chance; you can be the one version of yourself in all infinite universe that exist that just lives for yourself.”

           “Amina, you can help. You can save people.”

           “Yes but I can save people now too, I can save you!” Amina says hysterically, laughing and crying at once. “You’ve come this far, you’re the only one who’s listened to anything I’ve had to say…. Just stay Nisha, just be selfish and stay.”

           Nisha takes a shuddering breath, anger and want punctuated in her movements. “Amina, you can come with me. You can help me; you can help so many others.”

           “I can’t.”

           Nisha does not realize how close the two are standing. Amina’s admission instills within her a feeling of deep disgust — a revulsion. She steps back and in a soft tone she sighs, “I expected more from you.”

“Nish—”

“You know, I will admit that perhaps there is a part of me that wants to live for myself. To stay in this universe and not bother about war and famine and genocide. I know my place in this fight — a lowly soldier, sent to travel across universes to find someone that has an infinite power to rebuild and revitalize. One day, if it comes, I will die in this war. And I will die knowing that I did everything I could to try and convince you to come.”

“But will you have done what you wanted?”

“No. I will have done what is necessary. Amina, tonight you have the luxury of choosing what you want. If I don’t return, my comrades will mourn me with the little time they have before going on to fight endlessly. I will be here, in comfort, just so you can feel less lonely. My choice is not about what I want, my choice is between you and a cause that dwarfs us. It is between you and my home. My home, Amina.”

“This could be your home.”

“How many Nishas have you left in the cold because you could not replace yours? I don’t belong here.”

Nisha opens her mouth to say more, but there is nothing left. She unclenches her hands — not knowing when she clenched them in the first place — and smooths her clothing before walking to the descending stairs.

“Wait.”

Nisha stops and slightly turns, hopeful that Amina’s changed her mind.

“Here.”

Amina hands Nisha the book that Nisha had burnt: The Art of Angling, Poems About Fishing. “I am sorry that I cannot do this. But if you change your mind…there is a book that this library will always never have.”

Nisha takes the book and laughs, “You could have had the reverence of a whole people, Amina. Yet, fear has struck you so deeply, that tonight you will sleep alone. In a small town in Maine, waiting for someone to finally choose you.”

“I—”

“You could end much more than this war, Amina.” The book catches flame in Nisha’s hand, crumbling to a pile of ash. Her gloved hand outstretches for the first and last time, “Just come with me. I know I am not your Nisha. But you are the only Amina I will ever know.”

Amina is caught in a dilemma.

“Amina, help me. I promise to you that you are not going to be alone. I want to know you beyond a file, Amina, I want to help you.”

Amina swallows. She looks at Nisha’s pleading eyes. There is an unlikely loyalty. She closes her eyes. In an act of blind courage, Amina takes Nisha’s hand.