Epilogue

The crowd screamed, panicking. Police drew their guns, pointing them at the ground, ready to take down the shooter if they could spot him. The man stood back up from where he had fallen, looking around in wonder. Silence encapsulated him, a pinpoint beacon of sanity amidst the contagious fear of the crowd. Sensation was still tricky, confusing him. Had something hit him from behind and pushed him to the ground right before the gunshot? The other way, the other reality, was fading, but for half a heartbeat he traversed both.

Hidden like a viper, coiled and ready to strike, the knowledge of what might have been gnawed at him. Fighting to push it to the back of his mind, he took stock. He stood still amongst the whirlwind of motion surrounding him, frozen in place while people ran for cover.

“No man is an island.” He spoke it like a mantra, reminding himself that he was a part of all this, not just the eye of the storm. People around him pointed up and behind him, so he looked back. A window leapt out of the background for him the second his eyes lit on it. An empty tripod stood in the window, some type of clamp attached to the top of it, spinning in its joint. His gaze fell to the ground below. How could he see that far with such clarity? The thought lazily drifted across his mind.

He knew the defenestrated woman too well, from his trial if not his memories. The fall had broken her neck. On the ground next to her lay a Glock, with a shattered scope affixed to it. The gun pushed at his memories and a glimmer of understanding dawned on him. He squeezed his empty hand. The understanding did not come to him as an epiphany; it was not a cataclysmic opening of his mind to the truth. Rather, it was a thief in the dark of night sneaking into his mind and settled in: as though it had always been there.

And once it arrived, it had always been there. He smiled and calmly walked away from the crowd. What had been done was now undone. And the Origin … was once again safe. And now he understood what that was, and that it existed. With a simple motion, just pushing another man down, he had determined exactly what the future was to be. Hard though the choice had been, there truly was no other choice. He left and went back to living his life, walking through the reflections of the Origin into his future.