From Bad To Multiverse: A Speculative Fiore

They say the cosmos is an infinite tapestry of parallel universes, stretching from here to impossibility. It makes as much sense as anything else. Dodos swimming to Cambodia? Knighthood flowering in Central Park? Werewolves barking on the Moon? I could almost hear them. What I couldn’t do was imagine a world in which I got laid in high school.

So I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by responding to the weirdest spam message this side of Nigeria:

     Got regrets? Unfinished business? Unrealizable ambitions? Need help visualizing success? Quit mumbling your mantras and let US do it for you! You may not know it, but somewhere, out there, is a version of you who was good enough, bold enough or just plain lucky enough to make it happen—and we’ve got the whole thing on tape!   

     You don’t have to believe us—just hit reply and lay out the scenario you crave, in 20 words or less. We’ll send you the video file within 24 hours. That’s all there is to it! There’s no money down! No spyware scam! No hidden catches in your cache! We don’t want to see your cash until you’ve seen yourself at your best (or your worst—we’re not here to judge you!)

     At Parascope Productions, we can’t change reality – but we can change your perspective!

     The price for this stolen glance? One hundred bucks.

I never expected to pay it, but I followed the instructions to a tee.

My scenario?

“Kristy falls in love with me in grade ten, and we enjoy a torrid, intellectually stimulating romance all through college.”

I hadn’t seen Kristy Valo in 15 years – had hardly even thought about her during that time – but I guess part of me will always be walking my dog down her street with my fingers crossed.

She had spoken to me exactly once during our shared tenure at Lacklustre Prime Minister High. And it had not been an invitation to dance. (If you must know, she had turned around in civics class, one spring afternoon, looked me dead in the eye, and issued a one-word edict against my miserable pubescent moustache. “Shave.” If there’d been a razor handy, I’d have slain it right then and there, but my freshly stripped upper lip drew no comment the next day.) To be perfectly honest though, if she had ever cocked an ear my way, she’d have gotten nothing but slop for her pains. At that stage of what we might laughingly call my development, the best I could muster was awe. So I just sucked in the nuggets like some baleen-mawed chicken of the hormonal sea: Her infidel squint at the bus stop, as we wasted a wintry dawn… The little bit of hip that I glimpsed through the back of her chair in enriched math class… The malevolent grin that came over her face, as her chemistry project caught fire…

How could I help wondering how those scenes might have played, if I’d tried something Tony Robbins drastic?

Which doesn’t mean I expected any answers.

I expected a virus.

What I got, the next morning, was an invoice and a link to a streaming site.

It looked almost reputable, but just to be safe, I reached for the girlfriend’s old laptop.

I wrestled its touch-addled track pad onto the page, entitled: “Kristy Valo, 1990”. This freaked me a little bit out. Had I given them her full name? And what about that date? I swallowed my qualms and pressed play.

And there it was: the old high school caf, fifteen minutes before homeroom. There I was: hunched over black coffee at the dork table, doing…what? Homework? No. It only looked like homework. It was Rotisserie League Baseball statistics.

You think Kristy was wrong to ignore me? Think again.

Then, almost as if he suspected I was watching from another, less fortunate dimension, my counterpart looked up from his ridiculous ledger and smiled. The camera panned past metalheads and goth girls, debutants and jocks, alighting on brackish brown eyes in a cracked locker mirror.

“What’s wrong Kristy?” I heard my voice ask.

The eyes swivelled right and a peroxided ponytail filled the mirror.

“You mean before this grotesque interruption?” she sneered.

“Hey, I’m just trying to return a favor.”

“A favor?” she glared away the rest of her tears.

“Uh-huh,” I (he!) nodded. “Three years ago, in civics class, you ordered me to shave. Best advice I ever got.”

“Yeah…that sounds made up,” she reached into her locker for a book.

“It does, doesn’t it? Why would you talk to me?”

She shrugged.

“Maybe you thought there was something I needed to hear,” this brazen version of me continued. “Anyway, that’s why I’m talking to you.”

She looked at me a little bit differently:

“And what do I need to hear?”

“Whoever’s been making you cry is gonna regret it.”

She hit me with her patented squint:

“That’s it? That’s your best 8 AM move?”

“I guess so. I’ll have something better for you by 8:30, as long as we’re anywhere but here.”

She got rid of the book and we cut.

+++

     The movie bustled forward through six years of romantic hijinks, accompanied by period rock. Sex on the mountain, skipping out on prom, comparing philosophies in college… The big breakup scene, occasioned by diverging grad school destinies, featured music from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

When it ended, I pressed play again.

I might never have stopped if Inez hadn’t come home from work.

“Whacha doin’ with that old thing, Baby?” she massaged my shoulders and peered over them.

“Oh,” I improvised, “my desktop got hijacked by a service pack update…”

“Ah,” she trailed her fingers across my back and flopped onto the couch. “God I’m tired! Are we going to this party tonight?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” I smiled.

“I really don’t.”

She changed into her blue ninja pyjamas and I cooked up my special tomato sauce with raisins and seeds.

When I got back to the couch, she was completely passed out, with her knuckles splayed over her eyes.

I kissed her awake and she inched into a sitting position. As her brown eyes lost their blear, they focused plaintively on mine, and she pantomimed her thirst with a quick jerk of cup-fist to lips.

I poured two glasses of Brita water and we settled in.

“Thanks, Baby,” she said softly, halfway between adoration and boredom.

We put on the Marx Brothers and fell asleep.

+++

     I hadn’t seen Kristy in 15 years, but somewhere along the way, we’d become Facebook friends. Not that we had ever interacted, of course, or even “liked” anything each other had done. Still, the connection was there. So I sent her the link the next morning.

A man sometimes gets the urge to share his paranormal clips with old crushes and Mark Zuckerberg.

But those urges clear up in a hurry. Pretty soon I got another one that involved making Inez sleep through every Mickey Rooney movie ever made. That would’ve kept us busy for a while.

Then Kristy wrote me back:

Finally clicked on your little link…

     WHUT… THA… FAWK???????????????????????

     Meet me at the Kampus Kaffeinery on College, tomorrow at 7 PM.

     Okay?

     I marked the appointment on my calendar.

+++

     In high school, Kristy had swaggered down those mean halls with all of the bemused verve of a Byronic runway model: hyper-aware of (and a little disgusted by) the power of her eclipse black stare and slightly bony body to raise tidal waves of testosterone in her wake. When I caught up with her online 15 years later, I could discern no trace of that domineering dynamism in Kristy’s strictly-by-the-Facebook rote-call of suburban profile shots.

But I saw it quite plainly when I sat down with her at the earthy/glittery pre-yup metrosexual establishment she’d chosen for our meeting place. The years had been kind to Kristy’s skin and physique, despite three much-documented trips to the maternity ward. That much I knew from the slab-of-life photos. But now her countenance fairly crackled with a renewed awareness of the absurdity of it all.

I took full responsibility for the change.

“What are you smiling at, cinnamon lips?” she demanded to know.

I put down the mug and raised my guard.

“Nothing,” (did my voice crack?) “Just, the… situation…”

“And what exactly is the… situation?”

“I don’t… know… a reappraisal, maybe?”

“Oh come on! Based on what? That faked wet dream?”

I felt some spine in my tongue.

“I don’t believe it’s a fake. And neither do you—or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be off doing yoga, or whatever the fuck you do to get through the hours between homework time and the half-naked headache.”

“Okay fine,” she sighed, “I guess it’s even harder to believe that there are teenaged doppelgangers of our entire class sitting around central casting…”

“Also,” I felt the need to add, “they tore down the cafeteria and those acid-washed lockers 10 years ago.”

“Right. So what’s the deal with Parascope Productions? Is this where our tax dollars go?”

“I don’t know any more about it than you do.”

“Well, don’t you want to find out?!” she leaned toward me.

“Not particularly. I’m more interested in thinking about the implications.”

“Implications?”

“For us, Kristy. Do you have any idea what it means to me to know that I could’ve walked up to you at any time during high school and gotten those kinds of results?”

“Whoa! Where’d you get that idea? Believe me, whoever made that movie picked the only possible day you could’ve gotten anything more than a chuckle out of me. It was the worst day of my life and I probably would have gone off with anyone that had bothered to notice it.”

I tried not to sag.

“Alright, alright… That figures… But you’ve got to admit, we seemed to have an awful lot of fun together.”

“Sure,” she actually smiled, “and we also had a pretty amazing effect on each other, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I mean, it’s hard to tell from the viewer’s position, but those orgasms looked real…”

“What the hell is the matter with you? Are you really stunted enough to imagine that I was talking about orgasms?”

“What else is there?” I shrugged.

“Let me put it to you this way, genius. What do you do for a living?”

“I… well, I write ad copy… you probably know that.”

“Right. And what have I done with my life?”

I cleared my throat and delivered the speech:

“You’ve raised three fine children and help to run a very prosperous spa on the side.”

“Right. We’re a couple of nonentities. And what were they?” she fixed her gaze upon that far-off dimension.

“Uh…I guess it looked like they were on the road to becoming successful academics.”

“That’s what I was talking about.”

I scratched my head:

“You always wanted to be a professor?”

“No,” she shook hers. “But I do now.”

I stood up to leave.

“So go back to school then!”

She grabbed my bicep.

“Help me find them.”

“Kristy, I’m really not interested.”

“Don’t you think you owe it to me?”

I pondered the question for a moment.

“Actually, you’re probably right about that. I’m still not doing it.”

“So you’re gonna throw away your chance to be with me?”

My mouth felt dry as hell.

“Is that part of the deal?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You think that’s what this whole thing was about?”

“No,” she rose to look me in the eye, “I guess not. I guess it’s about the same thing it always was: a scared little boy who’d rather whack off to the memory of me telling him to shave than make a move.”

“You remember telling me to shave?” (my voice definitely cracked.)

“Of course not.”

She left a $10 bill behind on the table.

+++

     Life went on as before. More sleepy viewings. More parties ignored. More seedy noodles. More Brita water.

Then Kristy wrote me again:

Well, I found the bastards. No thanks to you. Luckily, there are tons of detectives in the book. I’m getting ready now. This is happening and you’re coming with me. Pier Thirteen at eleven. Don’t you fucking dare say no.

     When they start tossing invites to “Pier 13” at you, it doesn’t really matter how you respond. You are in a desperately maudlin situation.

I paused the movie and got dressed.

+++

     At 11pm, I found Kristy perched at the edge of her parody pier, surveying the sea monarchically.

“See out there,” she punched her index finger through countervailing winds, “where the buoys are? That’s where we’re headed.”

“Where the buoys are?” I smirked. “Really?”

She grabbed my arm and led me down a set of steps to a boat waiting in the brine.

Kristy took the oars and went into her squint.

The minutes sloshed by in silence.

The full moon hung low, Damocles-style.

Kristy’s forearm muscles bulged, but her breathing shimmered like cardiovascular gold.

Our prow slammed a gunmetal gong.

“Get up,” she announced, in the tone that had made a little shaver of me.

You’d better believe I got up.

Parascope was a medium-sized submarine lolling hatch-open in the harbor of a major North American city. Kristy stepped onto its barnacled deck and climbed down.

I tied our boat to the rail and followed suit.

+++

     The floors were scummed over with developing fluid residue.

“What makes you think this disgusting shit is developing fluid?” Kristy snarled.

I picked up three snapshots of me at sixteen, doing lame things. Solving math problems. Watching Supergirl. Walking my dog past the Valos’ house. All with the same look of horniness caught in the headlights. There were thousands of others.

“What’s this on the back?” she grabbed one from my hand.

Each photo bore a neatly written symbol.

“That’s its quadrant designation, Ms. Valo,” a PA system replied.

The voice was low, feminine and drawling.

It filled the close chamber like honeysuckle musk.

“I ‘pologize for the mess, kids. You just wouldn’t believe how many of those we had to take before we found anything between you two…”

“Oh I believe it all right,” Kristy scanned the echoing room, which looked like the bridge of every sub I’d ever seen on TV, except for the weird planetarium projector periscope at the center of it.

“I’ll just bet you do, darlin’. That was some flukey pick-up our boy engineered. But I’m glad he made it. Otherwise they’d have pulled my funding for sure.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m just next door, honey—in the crew’s quarters. Feel free to join me, if y’like. I’d be glad o’ the company. Everyone else left.”

“Left?”

“Went back to our home planet, I mean.”

My companion shot me a glance.

“After you,” I gestured toward a pressurized door with a wheeled knob on it.

Kristy swallowed hard and spun harder.

The door came unstuck.

“Right then,” the voice beckoned, without benefit of speakers, “come on in. I’ll make some tea.”

A strange sucking noise accompanied the invitation.

It seemed awfully dark in there for teatime.

Kristy pulled out her wallet and spread it in her palm.

“Are you saying goodbye to your children?” I whispered.

She made a face:

“I’m wondering if my ID will be good on the other side.”

“Come on now,” the voice sounded impatient, “no lollygaggin’!”

Light poured from the mysterious room.

I gave up and barged in.

The table was set for three.

“That’s more like it,” our host chirped.

I didn’t just pick that verb out of the thesaurus. Our host was a bipedal bird. Or anyway, she looked like one, with barely-there bones, jewel-set eyes and a light dusting of yellow feathers under her red party dress.

“Sit down folks,” she poured tea in our cups. “I’m LB.”

“Thanks,” I settled in. “Pleased to meet you.”

Kristy crossed her arms and tapped a heel on the polished checkerboard floor.

“What the fuck is this place, LB?”

The question needed asking. In contrast with the muck-encrusted bridge, everything in LB’s “crew’s quarter’s” had an art deco sheen, from the high-contrast tiles to the shelves filled with oddments to the huge bay window onto crimson-hued eternities in the far wall.

“It’s like Alice in Wonderland with a Tennessee Williams hangover in here,” she hefted a hard-boiled dragon’s eye.

“I’m sorry you don’t like it, honey,” LB sounded genuinely saddened. “This is just how I like things.”

“Well, I can’t begrudge you that, can I? So you said you’re all alone here?”

“I am now, yes. But there were a score of us during our busy period.”

Kristy shelved the orb and marched toward the table:

“And when was that?”

“After your friend here submitted his request,” LB pointed at me. “Don’t be so ornery, honey. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Well, I’ve got a question,” I cleared my throat. “You mentioned ‘funding’ a while back. Was this some kind of an experiment?”

“Indeed it was, sugar. Nothing so nasty as the kinds of things you humans pull on other creatures… Just a little test to study your reactions to the possibility and then the reality of alternate Earths… We didn’t get much of a sample, I’m afraid. Out of the thousands of people on our mailing list – we purchased it from a geek message board you frequent – you’re the only one who got back to us.”

“Really?”

“’Fraid so… We’ve since discovered that leading off with the word ‘beloved’ or a request for bank account information might have helped the cause…”

“Okay,” Kristy sat down, “save it for your next grant application! Just tell us how you’re doing this shit!”

“Take it easy, darlin’!” LB soothed.

A timer went off and she fluttered over to a silvery oven and pulled out some piping hot corn biscuits.

“You’re gonna love these, I promise!”

“Here’s something for your notebook, LB,” I laid my cards on the table. “When humans find themselves on the cusp of revelation, they don’t usually have much of an appetite… They do smell damned good though.”

“All right, all right,” she buttered one each for Kristy and me. “You eat those when you’re ready… And as for the parascope, well, there’s not a whole lot to tell. It works just like a telescope, honey – only it’s got a 5-D lens. The tricky thing is knowing where to point it. If we had our paratelemetry expert on site, I’d get her to explain it to you. Since we don’t, all I can say is: there’s a lot of complex math involved.

“Pinpointing a time and place is simple as pie, but shading in those extra dimensional coordinates is tough… As I told you before, we plum wore ourselves out combing the cosmos at random for David’s scenario. Once we found it though, we just punched a few numbers into the Paraperture,” she indicated the bay window, “and started filming!”

“So that little space show is an inter-dimensional portal?” Kristy’s voice rose.

“You bet,” LB nodded. “It’s a time machine too. Every vessel’s got one.”

“Great,” Kristy pulled out the biggest fucking gun I had ever seen and aimed it at LB’s head. “I’m using it.”

She also ate her corn biscuit. And mine.

“C’mon now, sugar. You don’t wanna do that.”

“Naw, ‘course not, ‘honey’,” Kristy sneered. “Why the hell would I want a PhD in English Lit and a tenure track job?”

“But what about your kids?!” I thought of all those Facebook albums.

“Oh would you stop it with the kids. I know how this works. If I jump dimensions, my counterpart’ll wind up here. Let her be a mom for a while.”

“But who says you’re not a mom in that other reality? We only saw up until about 10 years ago!” I reasoned.

“No problem! I’ll be a mom with a PhD. It’s not the kids I’m bored with…”

“Oh man,” I began to fear for the alien’s life. “But you can’t let her do it, right LB? There must be some rule against tampering with the delicate structure of things.”

LB considered this and said:

“Tampering with the delicate structure of things is what my people do.”

“Jesus Christ! And I guess lying is not something your people can do.”

“Oh, I guess we could manage it alright. But what’s the point?”

“Great,” Kristy stood up. “So what’s the hold up? I’m ready.”

“Unfortunately honey, the only way you’re going anywhere is if David agrees to join you.”

“Come again?” my heart sank.

“It was your scenario, sugar… I don’t make the rules.”

“Don’t you?” a terror alert light bulb lit up in my head. “You said this was an experiment.”

“Well now, that’s true.”

Kristy turned the gun on me.

“What’s it gonna be?” the squint compressed her gaze to diamond.

“I…” I turned to LB. “So was she right about the process? The other me will show up here?”

“Yep,” the bird nodded benignly. “That’s about the size of it.”

“Don’t fret about your precious copywriting contracts,” Kristy snickered. “They’ll get filled.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Good. Stay focused Fiore. On the gun.”

That wasn’t it either.

LB crunched the numbers and the Paraperture took shape: showing Kristy at a lectern and me in mid-debate.

Perhaps it was a more than even trade.

But as we slid across the threshold and Kristy smiled away her gun, I pictured Inez upon the sofa, passed out in blue ninja pyjamas, with a Mickey Rooney movie on – and I hoped that my replacement would know what to do, when she jerked a cup-fist to her lips.