Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a Hugo-and Locus-award finalist who has published some forty stories, as well as over a hundred essays, reviews, and interviews, in professional magazines and anthologies.
When Mom started reminiscing about Dad’s stint as an army chemical engineer, I told myself that I’d misheard, but deep down I suppose I knew better.
“What were you saying about Dad?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
She retreated into her bedroom, me in tow, and began brushing her long white hair, a task that seemed to take a little longer each day.
“No, really,” I said, “I’d love to hear it.”
She stopped the smooth, repetitive downward motion and smiled, brown eyes furtive like those of a child caught with candy. She set down the brush on her oak drawer chest—or commode, as she insisted on calling it. “I was thinking about his knack for chemistry, that’s all. He was almost as good at it as I was at physics.” She grinned mischievously.
“Mom,” I said, “Dad served in the army for less than a year before being honorably discharged and becoming a teacher. He never worked as a chemical engineer.”
“I know that,” she said, looking down. And then: “Do you mind if I take a nap? I just want to lie down for a while.”
Hard as it was, I had to do something. So, while she rested, feeling discomfited by my own actions but pushing myself forward anyway, I raised a privacy e-blanket and called Dr. Hartwood.
He asked if I’d noticed any other memory incidents. I reflected. Normally I discern patterns with ease—it’s why overseas film studios pay me to analyze their pre-releases, because I can catch subtle things the algorithms miss—but it was only when Dr. Hartwood put me on the spot that I recalled other instances of Mom’s memory going awry. Little things, like her not remembering the title of a book she’d read a few months before, or asking if we needed milk after buying some two days earlier. I’d swept each event aside, convincing myself that it was an isolated occurrence. Simply old age encroaching, I told myself. But now the pattern, and my complicit self-deception, were obvious. “Yeah, I suppose I have,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment.
A few days later, the three of us met in person. I told Mom the visit was an ordinary age-related checkup. Dr. Hartwood asked her a lot of questions about major life events—where she’d grown up, when she’d gotten married, my birth, Dad’s death, and so on.
When, a minute in, she said I’d been born in Pittsburgh—instead of Ithaca—I felt like someone had dumped ashes inside my mouth. Her accounts over the next dozen questions departed from reality with increasing severity. I’m not sure what depressed me more: how wrong she was, or how calm and confident she sounded.
The doctor subjected her to several bio-scans and consulted with an AI. A week, he said. We made the follow-up appointment.
A recent spike in urban crime was causing my boyfriend, Kyle, to put in a lot of overtime, and things had been rocky between us for a while anyway, so I didn’t share the details of these visits with him.
During our second appointment, Dr. Hartwood performed an even more comprehensive salvo of tests. As we were wrapping up, he scanned his tablet and looked at Mom. “Thank you very much. You’ve done great, Connie. We’re almost finished here. One last question: could you tell me about your early research on quantum entanglement?”
I was annoyed because I didn’t see how Mom’s research, now forty years in the past, could possibly be relevant to her current condition.
But Mom wasn’t upset at all. “Sure,” she replied. “I was part of the first group that showed that it was possible to transfer information from one place to another instantaneously, and without degradation. My work killed the cryptography industry,” she continued placidly. “More importantly, it led to the full-body teleporter that we use today.”
I stared at her. Her imagination was really out of control.
“So that’s how you remember things, then,” Dr. Hartwood said, unfazed. He turned to me. “Well, I’ve got bad news and good news for you both. Those memories are accurate. Unfortunately, they don’t correspond to our reality.”
I leaned forward, trying to make sure I’d heard correctly.
“It’s true,” he said, in response to my discomfort-cum-disbelief. “You see, Pat, in our reality your mother performed early pioneer work on quantum teleportation that ultimately didn’t pan out, but that’s not the whole story. Part of the reason the research died was the government’s fear that the scientists involved were being exposed to potentially unsafe side effects. Your mom’s present state is the result of one such lingering issue finally catching up to her in her old age. It’s extraordinarily rare, which is why I needed all these extra tests, and even then, once I knew the field your mother had worked in and suspected what was going on, I had to verify the results with a specialist. The papers on this have always fascinated me. The condition is called dementia parallela—or, less technically, memory fingers.” He turned back to my mom. “Our multiverse consists of infinite parallel realities, and your consciousness, Connie, is starting to reach out to these realities. Due to detrimental proximity to your past experiments, your memory is tuning in to events that have happened in these other worlds. As a result, your grasp on your life here, in this reality, is weakening. Your consciousness is de-cohering.”
So this was why Mom was so sure of what she described. It really had happened.
But not in this reality.
I cleared my throat. “What are our options?”
Dr. Hartwood said, “I’m very sorry, but the de-coherence will continue to progress until it leads to a final . . .collapse.”
“There’s no treatment?”
“I’m afraid that we don’t know any way to stop this,” he said. “But we can slow things down.”
“How?” Mom asked.
“If you want us to,” Dr. Hartwood said, “we can undertake a search for someone whose brain wave functions are similar enough to yours to be a compatible sharer of the de-coherence effect. We can then use quantum entanglement to displace your de-coherence to the volunteer—up to a point. The volunteer would be paid handsomely. This procedure would help us learn more about this rare effect, while giving you some additional time.”
“You want to transmit my sickness to someone else? That doesn’t sound very nice,” Mom said. “I don’t think I—”
“Mom,” I interrupted, surprising myself with the forcefulness of my tone. “The person would be a volunteer. They’d be rewarded. And science would benefit. Can we not jump to decisions, please?”
Mom looked sad. “I don’t like the sound of it.”
I glanced at the doctor. “How long do you think it would take to locate a compatible sharer?”
“We’ll scan our database and I’ll let you know.”
I replied before Mom could. “Please start the search right away. We can always back out if we change our minds, right?”
“Of course,” Dr. Hartwood assured. His tone wasn’t silky enough to distract me from Mom’s sullen expression.
* * *
During the next three weeks my sleep cycle eroded. I’d been a regular consumer of toss-and-turn angst ever since Kyle had moved out, but now I was assaulted by epic nightmares. Thick, stalk-like tendrils would grow out of Mom’s nose and ears, followed by writhing vines that burst through her skull to reveal a swollen, palpitating mess of tangled roots where her brain should have been. I’d wake up with cold sweats and skim-read papers I didn’t understand on quantum entanglement. During the daytime I was bleary-eyed and cranky, nodding off at the least appropriate times. I developed a “don’t-argue-with-me-or-else” rudeness I disliked, but which ironically proved helpful in dealing with Mom’s condition. Bit by bit, I wore her resistance down until she finally agreed to the transfer procedure. I recorded her consent and forwarded it to Dr. Hartwood, all the while suppressing the hollow sensation in my chest.
The few times I spoke with Kyle he expressed concern about my obvious irritability. I finally explained to him what was happening.
“I know things are complicated between us right now, but you don’t have to go through this alone,” he said.
“Yes they are, and of course I do,” I said. “She’s my mom, and I’m her support system.”
“I just meant—”
“You were advertising what might be,” I said. “But I’m only in the market for what is.”
He knew better than to argue.
The following week Dr. Hartwood contacted me. “We’ve found a match,” he said. “We can begin as soon as your mother is ready.”
A chill passed over me. It was really happening. “Who is it?”
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that,” he said. “To protect both parties involved, you understand.”
“I don’t need protection,” I replied. “What I want is to express my gratitude to the volunteer personally.”
Dr. Hartwood swallowed. “Pat, I realize this must be taking a tremendous toll on you. But I can’t.”
“Help me out here,” I pleaded. “Let me say thanks.”
“Believe me, I’m helping you by not telling you.”
I tried a different approach. “Why would anyone agree to take on the mental confusion that comes with ‘memory fingers’ anyway? I mean, besides the money?”
“No one’s being duped here, if that’s what you’re implying,” Dr. Hartwood said, sitting very straight. “There’s a group of New Age types interested in consciousness de-coherence. They say it’s an ancient phenomenon, accessible through meditation, and that experiencing manifold realities brings them closer to transcendence.”
“Misremembering your life as nirvana? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Religion might provide a plausible motivation for some.”
“Fine, whatever,” I said. “Let me check in with Mom. I’m pretty sure we can meet you at nine a.m. tomorrow for the first session.”
“Here’s the address,” he said, and the data transferred into my system.
The following morning we bundled ourselves up in our autumn jackets and sat in the back of my car as it drove us to the lab through a steady downpour. The windshield wipers did all the talking. Once we got upstairs I was surprised by the size of the main device, a kind of super-MRI tunnel. The temperature inside the chamber was almost colder than it had been out in the rain; our jackets stayed on.
During the session I found myself thinking about the identity of the recipient almost as much as about Mom’s wellbeing. Whoever it was, he or she was likely in this same building, maybe a few rooms away from us, probably hooked up to a device like the one currently encompassing my mom. What was going through the volunteer’s mind, I wondered? Was he or she really being impelled to action because of a belief in some numinous, multi-reality bliss?
The session lasted a little over an hour. “Everything went well,” the tech told us.
He confirmed our following appointment and my car drove us back home. En route, Mom looked at me with a curious intensity, as though seeing me clearly for the first time in weeks. “So what ever happened to that friend of yours—I think her name was Lorrie? Didn’t you two used to have lunch on Fridays?”
I was speechless for five seconds. “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s exactly right. What else do you remember about her?”
“You know I don’t like being quizzed,” Mom said, tensing up. Then she relaxed, because showing off her improvement was fun. “She was one of your office friends, before you started telecommuting.”
I held back a giggle of delight. How was Lorrie, anyway? “Maybe I should check in with her. It’s been a while.”
By the time we walked up to the apartment door and the identity sensor unlocked it, we were in the middle of a conversation about music and math and old TV shows and relationships and anything and everything. I felt light. Like years had been shed from me. Maybe, I thought, the last few weeks have been a bad dream; a terrible misunderstanding. That’s what I told myself as I drifted off that night, because I was afraid that otherwise my newfound peace would dissolve in the night.
The next morning Mom was up before me, hair in a ponytail. I found her in the kitchen. Assorted breakfast ingredients lay on the counter, over which she leaned, frowning. “Honey, what’s the access code to the stove?” she asked. “I thought I knew it, but it’s not working.”
My stomach lurched. Had the procedure’s effects worn off so quickly? Please, no. “What are you punching in?” I asked, and reminded myself to breathe normally.
“Clytemnestra-6,” she said.
Phew. When Mom’s memory issues had flared up I’d changed the code to prevent an accidental fire. “Sorry, Mom, I updated it. The new code is Erigone-8.”
Mom got the stove on. “There, much better. You like your eggs runny, don’t you?”
“Well done,” I said. “I mean, the eggs.”
“Oops,” she said. “Thanks.”
While she prepared the coffee, eggs and toast, I yawned and stretched. My right shoulder made a popping sound and my neck clacked with pent-up tension. I tried to recall last night’s dreams. For once they hadn’t been about Mom. Someone had been shuffling down a drab street under crimson clouds and a barrage of lightning. I feared the stranger was hurt and needed my help. I was trying to catch up, but no matter how much I ran I always remained twenty steps behind, disoriented by the stroboscopic flashes from the fiery heavens above. “Hey you!” I yelled. When the stranger turned around, I saw he was faceless; emptiness incarnate.
Mom sat down and we ate. It didn’t take long for her to notice that I was only pecking away at my food.
“Pat, look at me.”
I did.
“I’m still going to make mistakes,” she said. “This isn’t a cure. We need to remember that. Let’s enjoy whatever time we have together.”
“Of course,” I said. “I had some weird dreams last night, that’s all. More coffee will help.” I poured myself a second cup and put on a brave face, pretending my sorrow was a physical object I could push out of the way. “When we’re done here I need to make a few calls. This is delicious, by the way. Thank you so much.” Mom had seasoned the eggs with black pepper and a smattering of tarragon, exactly how I liked them, even if she had undercooked them in the end.
“My pleasure. Calling anyone I know—like Kyle, maybe?”
“So nosy,” I said, and laughed. “Maybe I am.”
“I’ll be in my room,” she said.
A short while later, Kyle said, “Nice to see you.”
I was going to pay him some kind of compliment, but then I noticed his stubble, along with the rumpled collar of his normally stiff, pristine shirt. So I settled for, “How are things?”
“Busy,” he said, which I easily believed. Then I wondered if he was being vague on purpose: one of his talents, keeping people out. Maybe that’s what I’m becoming to him, I thought. Just people. Funny. That aloofness had been part of the appeal—a long time ago. “How’s Connie doing?” he asked, voice grave and formal.
“First session has worked wonders.” I elided in my own thoughts the little mistake she’d made with my eggs, rewriting my memory so that it never happened. “In fact, that’s why I was calling you.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted to take you up on your offer for help after all,” I said. “I’d really like to thank the person who’s helping Mom get better.”
Kyle’s right eyebrow arched. “How does that involve me?”
“The process is officially anonymous. Some medical rule designed to keep everyone out of everyone else’s hair.”
“Gotcha,” he said. “A medical rule—or a law?”
“Not sure.”
“It sort of makes a difference,” he said, his tone droll. He scratched at his nascent beard. For the thousandth time, I thought about how I missed sharing a bed with him. I was sure he missed it too. Despite my best intentions to keep it bottled up, the longing must have manifested on my features. “I can look into it,” he said. “No promises, though.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Seriously.”
“You’re welcome. What can you tell me about the volunteer?”
“Not much.” I described our most recent appointment: where we’d gone, how long we’d stayed there, and so on. I told him when the next one was and repeated what the doctor had said about New Age mystics being into consciousness de-coherence. A few minutes later the conversation drew to the kind of awkward silence we were training ourselves to accept, and so, like civilized people, we said goodbye.
* * *
After the second session, Mom and I went for a long stroll at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore’s largest park and my favorite ever since I was a kid. Throughout our walk, light shifted through the ponderous cloud mantle, turning the somber gray sky silver-sheened.
“Wonder what Dad would have made of all this,” I said. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up, considering the circumstances. On the other hand, why not take advantage of Mom’s clarity?
“He never cared much for quantum mechanics,” Mom said. “He was a regular Einstein in that respect.”
I chuckled. “I’m sure that memory fingers would have rubbed Dad the wrong way.” Lame, but the best I could manage under the circumstances. Mom smiled in appreciation.
We passed one of the park’s tennis courts, not in use during the rainy season. I remembered how shocked I’d been in school when they’d taught us that these same tennis courts had been for whites only since the park’s opening in the 1860s all the way through the 1940s. A fear of different realities blending, I thought, and only after caught the irony.
We walked on, silently marveling at the beauty of cherry blossoms and tall striped maples. In a few months they’d be dusted with snow.
When Mom spoke again her demeanor was different. “Do you think there might be a way to find out?” she said.
We reached one of the park’s main gates and exited. “Find what out?”
“What he would think.” She paused. “What he does think.”
Mom’s words stopped me in my tracks. “Are you talking about Dad?”
“Consider it, sweetie.” She hugged herself. Her breath was visible in little ghostly exhalations. “My mind is reaching out to all these other worlds where events played out differently. Countless imaginable scenarios. In one of them your father may still be alive. What if I could find that reality?”
My mouth felt dry and my eyes stung. The bracing air seemed to blur my vision and our luck with the clouds finally ran out. Rain pelted down and darkened the pavements, moving us along.
“Dad is gone,” I said. Anger crept into my voice. I stared at Mom, wanting her to register the intensity of my response. “My dad, your husband—he’s the only one that matters to me. I’m not interested in some other version of that man. I want us to remember this life.”
Mom seemed to shrink inside her large brown jacket. “You’re right,” she said, with a tenderness that killed me.
* * *
“The person helping your mom,” Kyle said, “is a young man by the name of Derek. Twenty-three-year-old Harvard psych student holding down a part-time job as a counseling assistant to help cover his tuition. Until recently, anyway.”
“Oh?”
Kyle hesitated, then continued. “He quit his job and dropped out of school. Two semesters shy of graduation.”
I thought about the faceless man in my dream. Not so faceless after all. “Shit.”
“Please don’t start with the self-blame,” Kyle chided. “You didn’t make him do this. He volunteered. He has his reasons. And I’m sure he was aware of the consequences.”
“He’s twenty three. How good were your reasons for doing anything at that age?”
Kyle shrugged, then shook his head. “Look, this is it. I’m not doing any more spying for you.”
Digesting what Kyle had shared was keeping me from forming cogent thoughts. But before he disconnected the call I raised my hand, as though I could reach through the screen and touch him. “Wait,” I said. “One more thing. Did anything come up about his religious affiliations?”
“Pat, religion or no, this is his life. I know you don’t want my advice, but here it is: focus on yours.”
He had a point. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the name Derek out of my head.
The nightmares returned. I dreamt I pushed an old man through a trapdoor that opened up on an infinite void. He screamed for help as he plummeted through the abyss; his voice was Dad’s voice, desperate, the way he’d sounded when he was on the last round of chemo.
To try and alleviate my sense of helplessness and guilt, I researched the group that Dr. Hartwood had alluded to. Their core tenet, as he had suggested, seemed to be that parallel realities offered a gateway to a true transcendence of self. The purpose of life, according to them, was to open up one’s mind, through whatever means available, and sample as many alternate realities as possible. Pleasing the parallels, they called it. Is that what you’re trying to do, Derek?
Mom’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. She was speaking out loud, without a privacy e-blanket, and it was clear she wasn’t talking to me. I walked into her room and saw her sitting on the bed, holding up a tablet. “Everything okay?” I asked.
She tapped the pause icon. “For the last few days I’ve been making these recordings.” She nodded in a soulful way. “They’re for you, Pat. Now that everything is straight in my head I want to set down my thoughts. Preserve the moments. Not sure how many are left.”
Trembling a little, I reached forward to hug her.
Still locked in the embrace, I imagined Derek’s parents hugging their son, trying to get to him through the increasingly thick fog of other realities.
In that moment I knew what I had to do.
* * *
Kyle was angry. I’d been nervous about sharing my decision with him, but after his help finding Derek I felt it fair to be honest.
“One more retreat,” he was quick to say. “You’ve been pulling away from your friends lately, Pat. People who care about you, who are invested in your happiness. Is this what you really want—to become even less aware of the world around you?”
“I wasn’t asking for your permission,” I replied, crossing my arms.
“Noble, self-sacrificing Pat,” he went on. “But how are you going to take care of your mom if you need help taking care of yourself? And what makes you even think you’re a compatible recipient?”
“I’m her daughter, so the chances are good,” I snapped. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” Truth be told, Kyle was making solid points. But I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I couldn’t let the young man—Derek, Derek, Derek—continue to take on our woes. And Mom still deserved to have her mind remain clear for as long as possible.
“Look, Pat,” Kyle urged, seeing that I wasn’t any closer to changing my mind. “Sorry for being on the offensive. All I’m saying is that I think this is a bad idea. I’m sure you haven’t told Connie because you know she’ll disapprove too. Despite everything that’s gone wrong between us . . . ” In that silence I visualized another world, one where Kyle and I didn’t need sentences like that. Perhaps that was one of the realities I’d find myself remembering in a few days. Small consolation it would be.
“I know you’ll be here for me,” I said, which was maybe presumptuous on my part. But I knew it was true.
* * *
The next day I received a call from Dr. Hartwood. Mom had apparently contacted him on her own—and not only had she asked to stop the transfers to the volunteer, but to actively speed up her de-coherence.
I was livid.
“How could you go behind my back and do that?” I demanded, barely holding back tears. “And why now? Did you bypass my privacy screen and eavesdrop on my chat with Kyle?”
She was calm. Her serene demeanor only fueled my frustration. “This is what I want,” she said. “I feel like I’m supposed to move along this path. And the volunteer’s life isn’t worth mine. I’m old and he’s young. It’s a simple equation.”
I wanted to sit down next to Mom, but I was still too upset. I settled for lowering my voice and pacing not-quite-frantically. “This isn’t one of your physics experiments,” I said. “You’re not some variable.”
Mom was quiet. Her eyes journeyed to a place I couldn’t follow. When they returned to the here-and-now, a sliver of her remained in that other realm.
In a soft voice she said, “The doctors can apply these intense fields around my brain to accelerate the consciousness de-coherence.”
“I don’t understand. Then why couldn’t they use the same technique in reverse to decelerate it?”
“Not so simple,” Mom said. “My de-coherence is like a hole in the hull of a sinking ship—hard to plug, but easy to widen. In a way, it’ll be a beautiful thing.”
“What?”
“My mind will disperse through a panoply of parallel worlds.” She fell quiet. “Dandelion seeds of consciousness scattered in the winds of the multiverse.”
I imagined fairy dust thinning until it was too faint to perceive: my mom’s entire life, the fading tail of a comet in its death throes.
“In a way, I won’t really be gone,” she went on. “Not in the strict scientific sense. Bits of me, infinitesimally small, will endure for a long time. Please understand that my decision doesn’t mean I love you any less.”
Then I’ve failed, I thought. I couldn’t accept what she was telling me.
“No,” I said, quivering. “I won’t sign the agreement. And without my endorsement as your primary caregiver, I doubt the doctors can speed up your de-coherence. I’ll argue that your decision is the result of mental confusion.”
She looked more disappointed than upset. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said. “That’s not the daughter I raised.”
“Nevertheless,” I shot back, “it’s the daughter you have.”
* * *
For the next few weeks we didn’t revisit our conversation. Mom didn’t try to cajole me into changing my mind. Nor did she sulk. In fact, she was the best, sunniest version of herself.
I sought refuge in my work, but it was impossible to focus for more than small intervals. It wasn’t just the uncertainty of the future that wrecked my concentration: I started experiencing severe headaches. I’d never felt migraines like this before. The pain would appear without warning, a devastating pressure that seemed to arise in both temples simultaneously and then bridged my forehead, encasing my head in an invisible bubble of crippling pain. The world seemed to press in against my cranium from every which side. I had to stop whatever I was doing and lie down in the dark. Often, tears would slide down my face, and during peak intensity the simple effort of raising my hand to wipe them away was too great, so they pooled and dried on my skin. Meds did nothing against the onslaught.
I consulted a doctor, though not Hartwood—I was too ashamed to tell him I was road-blocking Mom’s wishes, that we were at an impasse because of me. The physician couldn’t find anything wrong with me besides stress. She recommended regular social interactions and more consistent exercise. “Often these things take care of themselves,” she said. “But we can help the body’s natural mechanisms along.”
I scoffed at her platitudes and dismissed her advice. Social interactions were the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, even if I’d wanted to, I reasoned circularly, I couldn’t spend time with others to overcome my migraines because my migraines were preventing me from spending time with others. Heck, I was barely even talking to Mom.
One day, acting on impulse, I solicited Kyle’s opinion on Mom’s request. If he sided with me, I thought, maybe that would bring us closer together. And maybe Mom would reconsider.
I should have known better.
“If that’s what she truly wants,” Kyle said, ever the irritating paragon of reasonableness, “shouldn’t you consider it?”
“You’re no help at all,” I said.
But Kyle’s words lingered, came back as whispers in my head during quiet moments. And eventually, the terrible headaches became less frequent, then faded altogether. Once the pain subsided, a curious thing happened: I was left with an inexplicable feeling of tranquility. At first I thought it was simply relief at the absence of pain, an internal overcompensation. But after the second or third day I knew it was more than that. A warm, reassuring sensation at the core of who I was. For the first time in years, I felt centered. More patient. Things improved with Mom, even as her mis-memories worsened.
One evening, after running errands in the city and visiting the park again, Mom and I were watching a cooking show at home and I started feeling light-headed. A sudden tingling washed over me. It grew in intensity until I felt pins and needles in every part of my body. Reality blacked out for a dizzying instant. I wanted to throw up. Then all of it passed.
I blinked. When I looked around, Mom wasn’t there, and the living room had changed. It was larger, warmer, more brightly lit. A voice spoke to me, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from somewhere in this room or my own mind.
We apologize for any discomfort. Those are the side effects of dematerialization. Your recent headaches: that was us too. We were reaching into your reality and preparing your mind for this jump. A kind of brain “immunization,” if you will.
I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t. In that strange way in which absurdities seem entirely plausible in dreams, I accepted this preposterous explanation without question. These people had a teleporter and had bridged our worlds. Sure, why not?
Who is us? I asked.
We’re a research group studying the effects of memory fingers. Your sister, in fact, is the project lead. It was her idea to bring you over to our dimension.
My sister? Even amidst the surreal-ness of this situation, I retained enough sanity to know I didn’t have any siblings. But the idea of a sister, one who had perhaps followed in Mom’s steps, felt no more unlikely to me than the notion of memory fingers themselves.
Why did you bring me here?
The response was at once banal and mysterious. So that you could see.
I looked around.
There was no one in the room besides me. On closer inspection, I realized some of its furnishings might be mine—or at least they might have belonged to this reality’s me. A few items I could recognize. An antique portico clock with its familiar pendulum swinging between its two black columns; several lush potted Dieffenbachia with variegated bright green and white leaves; Mom’s prized oak commode; other assorted knick-knacks. But beyond these familiar mementos, nothing seemed remarkable, except perhaps the room’s inviting feeling. I felt strangely at home here.
At peace.
See what? I asked.
Take a good look, the voice said. There’s nothing to be afraid of. The realities your mom is slipping into aren’t dangerous or threatening.
The room’s stillness was the opposite of oppressive—it seemed to invite warm memories, peaceful reflection. In the far corner I spotted a picture of me and Mom. I feared it would make me cry, but it didn’t. We looked happy. An uncomplicated, spontaneous joy of the sort that’s impossible to stage—not dismissive of reality, but rooted in its ultimate acceptance. I hadn’t felt that way in real life for . . .
Too long.
Was this what the absence of loneliness felt like?
This is a silly dream, I said. Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
I opened my eyes and I was in my own living room once more, Mom beside me. “Welcome back,” she said.
I frowned.
“You nodded off.”
“How long was I out?”
“They finished the kingfish tails with smoked pipi broth and wakame oil, and now they’re working on blueberry-pecan galettes.”
Exhausted, I yawned, rose, and asked Mom if she needed anything before I went to bed.
“I think I’ll call it a night too,” she said.
* * *
Sometime during the following week Mom sensed the shift in me.
We never even had to talk about it.
After she felt it, she used her lucid periods to say her goodbyes to the people in this life that she cared about, and to put her affairs in order.
On the appointed day it took about an hour for the doctors to configure the enormous parasol-shaped screen several feet above Mom’s head. Dr. Hartwood was in attendance, though he wasn’t running the show—that required Dr. Singh. Still, it was nice of him to visit, and it made Mom more comfortable.
At one point I was asked to wait outside. Nobody could be in the OR with Mom because it would upset the device’s hyper-fine readings. Glumly, I complied.
In a sterile adjoining room I found myself calling Kyle. “I’m here,” I said. My voice quavered. “With Mom.”
He paused, understanding. “You’re doing the right thing, Pat,” he said. “Do you want me to come over?”
I hadn’t expected the offer. “No—no—it’ll be all right—but maybe later we . . .I dunno, maybe we could talk a bit.”
“Sure. Of course. Whatever you want.”
He waited, probably thinking the conversation was over. But there was one more thing on my mind I needed to get out. I told Kyle about my experience the week before. “Suppose for a second that it wasn’t a dream,” I whispered. “For argument’s sake, of course.”
“Okay.”
“Why would this putative research group care about me at all? Why go to all that trouble?”
“Hmmm,” he said. “If the problem spills over across realities, affecting not only the sufferer but each of the many versions of the sufferer broached by the memory fingers, maybe they wanted to help all those versions of Connie?”
“They just showed me a room.”
“But it influenced your decision, right? What if by ending your Mom’s suffering here you’re restoring the mental health of a multitude of other Connies?”
I wished he were right—if only to make my immediate future more bearable. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll let you know once it’s over.”
About ten minutes later I was admitted back in. Dr. Singh walked us through what would happen next, emphasizing that Mom wouldn’t feel any pain. It was only when she was done talking that it really hit me.
This is it.
Three techs came in and performed one final calibration. After they left, Dr. Singh asked Mom to take a seat under the huge dome-shaped machine.
Mom stood, immobile, and I kissed her on the cheek and squeezed her hand.
“I love you,” I said.
“You’ll be with me everywhere,” she replied.
She shivered, and I held her. Then, finally, she sat down and they wrapped the thin mesh interface over her clothes and attached several cables to her arms and hands. The oversized helmet began to descend, emitting a deep, rumbling sound, until it was inches above Mom’s head.
Dr. Singh gave the signal and a high-pitched sound emanated from the machine.
Mom closed her eyes.
As I stared at her, I had the weirdest sensation.
I felt something settle and click into place in the back of my head.
Like a key entering a lock.
Pleasing the parallels, I thought.
Copyright © 2020 by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.