Doorport Alterludes

The lives of six people around Dr Janet Thompson change in dramatic ways, each having little awareness of the changes as multiple parallel universes begin to cross threads. A married Denver County Sheriff's Deputy assigned to missing persons doesn't realize his wife has gone missing since he left for work that morning. A struggling environmental attorney occupying an old, drafty office on the outskirts of Denver thinks she must have been dreaming when she returns to her Corporate offices on the seventh floor with a grand view of the Capitol. A two-bit reporter at a small-circulation local weekly contemplates suicide, but after going to work the next day at the national daily, a Pulitzer in his pocket, he wonders what could possibly have possessed him to entertain thoughts of ending his life. Gerontopsychiatrist Dr David Winters packs his license to practice in his briefcase, the medical board having asked him to surrender it for having helped his parents die, and arrives at a law-signing ceremony that makes physician-assisted death legal. An assistant inspector general at a federal housing agency putting the final touches on an investigative report likely to blow the lid off horrific corruption at the Colorado Housing Authority steps through a doorport to get lunch, and she becomes depressed when she returns to her desk at the backwater transportation agency, where nothing happens because Doorports are so reliable. A psychiatric patient shows up for her appointment, ranting about how her life was stolen by Dr Janet Thompson at the age of twenty-eight and how the doorport system is nearing impending collapse, fixed delusions refractory to pharmacotherapy which don't change even after Dr Winters increases her dosage. Mostly incognizant of how their lives have changed, these six people assist or hinder Dr Thompson, VP of R&D at American Doorport, as she tries to revamp the entire doorport system -- from the time of its rollout forty years before. These are their stories.