When the dream was over, Kim stood while Vin climbed out of the crèche. He moved slowly. He still felt like he was Gao Cheng, as if the two of them were a double image. He was still struggling with frustrated desire for Li Yehao. The lively pressure of Kim’s hands and the feel of the robe on his skin had an unreal quality, a perfect familiarity that dissolved his ability to speak.
The light in the office was smeary and yellowish. Kim said, “Let’s go upstairs. I made us breakfast.”
He looked up into the chute and remembered Xiao Hui as a wire-haired puppy, remembered the lead soldiers Winston Churchill had spent hours of his childhood arranging in painted ranks for his father to notice, and the white edge of a ripple of blue water rolling onto a sand beach in the Philippines. Loneliness shivered through the memories.
“I’m okay,” he said, as he began to climb. “But it was difficult. Very lucid. It’s already almost impossible to remember how real it feels. I did make things happen though. But only in certain ways. I did something cruel.”
Kim was climbing behind him. “It was a dream.”
He waited in the dark bedroom. When she was out of the chute, she said, “I watched you almost the whole time. Nothing happened.”
There was a large formal table standing lengthwise in the dining room, circled by high-backed, carved wooden chairs. Mid-morning light from the picture window caught the table’s varnish in bright strips. Most of the table was stained dark, a slightly greenish color that muted the wood grain. A four-inch decorative inlay highlighted the grain around the edges. A seam in the middle suggested insertable leaves.
“I like the table,” he said.
“So do I,” Kim said as she went into the kitchen. “I’ll get breakfast.”
He pulled a chair out and sat, placing both palms on the table’s smooth surface. Kim stopped moving. She said, “That’s not what you meant, is it?”
“No.”
Kim was in jeans and a loose yellow blouse that accentuated movement. She had an oven mitt on and was lifting a plate of eggs. She set it on the island and watched him.
“You don’t remember the table, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you remember?”
“A small card table. A folding table. Cheap. With cheap folding chairs. It was here when I moved in.”
“The room was empty when you moved in. You told me you got that from Craigslist.”
“That didn’t happen.”
“No, you don’t remember it. It’s only me telling you that it was different, right? Like I said it would be.”
Vin nodded, acknowledging that she had anticipated this risk.
“What do we do?” Kim said, unnerved. “I have to ask you things now. Okay? So, what is your name?”
“What?”
She raised her hands, palms up.
“Vin Walsh,” he said.
“Okay. And, who am I?”
“Kim . . . Kimberly Badgerman.”
“And my brother, what is my brother’s name?”
“Is he alive?” Vin jumped to his feet, almost losing his balance as he pushed back the chair. “Did I do it?”
Kim held his gaze.
“He’s dead,” Vin said. He sat. “His name was Bill. He was shot by a man named Lincoln.” Vin looked across the table at an empty wooden chair.
“I bought this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Kim. This may sound crazy, I know—and maybe it’s offensive to say—but I don’t understand what, well, what evidence do I have that you’re not doing all this?”
“What—are you saying to me?”
“I mean, could you be replacing . . .” Vin heard how absurd the sentence would be if it were completed and stopped talking.
“Am I making all of this up? Is that what you’re asking? Whether this is me? Whether I’m gaslighting you?”
Vin froze, unable to acknowledge the question.
“Well, first, according to you, I’m dead. I mean, I think that would be a strange thing to do to you. And, I made us eggs.”
They didn’t talk as Kim brought the platter and pulled four slices from a toaster he didn’t own and carried them over with silverware he didn’t recognize. Using a long black plastic spoon that hadn’t been in the house before he went into the crèche, Kim put portions of eggs on unfamiliar white plates and offered one of them to him.
“The crèche is stealing your memories,” she said as he reached for the plate.
“You don’t know what’s happening.”
Oregano and cheddar in the eggs, the way he liked it. But he had no appetite and the smell was making him dizzy. “It’s not stealing memories. I have different memories,” he said at last. “But, you’re right. I can’t go in again.”
“And what about her?” Kim asked.
“Who?”
“That woman. The one in the other crèche.”
She was in the third casket, not the first, floating naked in the blue solution, and it wasn’t the same woman. This woman was short and heavyset, square-cheeked, her bobbed hair a slate and clunch-colored marl.
Vin’s hand was on the transparent pane when a segment of the lighting strip that bordered it began to flash yellow. Then a strip around the edge of the lid blinked green. Vin lifted his hand and the pane misted over. The crèche made a gurgling sound.
“She’s waking up,” Kim whispered.
“The cycle of revival,” Vin said.
“I’m glad she’s still alive.”
The way she said it jolted Vin. “How long has she been here?”
“Since you found this place.”
“But . . .” Vin had something to ask, but wasn’t sure what. He found the notebooks on the desk, picked up Nerdean’s and opened it, flipping through the pages one at a time. They all looked exactly as he remembered them, but because so much of the text was in Nerdean’s unreadable code, he couldn’t tell whether or not it had changed.
“Did I tell you if I knew her name?” he asked.
“That’s Nerdean. That’s what you said.”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
They tracked what was happening as the lights changed—yellow, green, yellow, blue, and then green again—accompanied by gargling and draining sounds and an occasional monotone whistling.
Kim said, “You should get your clothes on. But bring back the robe. I’ll stay with her.”
Though the full cycle of revival required more than an hour, it passed quickly. At the end, a segment on the indicator strips around both the transparent pane and the edge of the lid turned green. The segments of light kept pace with each other as they made a full circle around the casket. There were a series of crisp clicks and then the lid lifted, paused, and smoothly turned on one side as it swung open.
The woman lying within was on foam that they watched deflate and retract into the crèche’s interior, like an anemone retreating into its shell. Her eyes twitched under their lids and then opened and she drew in a long, tranquil breath. As she became aware of Vin and Kim, a flash of fear crossed her face. She opened her mouth but made a wheezing noise and shuddered into a spasm of soft coughing. Kim took a step forward, holding out the robe, but Vin reached to touch her arm and hold her back.
The coughing lasted a long time and the woman beat on her knee in frustration. When it subsided, she straightened, stretched against the bed of the casket and wiped her mouth with her wrist.
“Hi.” Her voice was a croak, worn, ragged like a fraying shirt. “Thanks for the help.” Kim glanced her disappointment at Vin. The woman said, “I don’t know you, do I?”
Kim shook her head.
“Have you been in one of these?” the woman asked, and Kim shook her head again. The woman said, “But, you must own this house, huh?”
“Yes,” Kim said, as the woman coughed.
“No,” said Vin, when she’d stopped. “I’m house-sitting.”
“House-sitting. Okay, I see. You found this room?”
Kim and Vin both said, “Yes.”
“Then, this must be strange for you.”
“It is,” Kim said.
“Yeah. And, well, me too.” Her voice was loosening up. “And I’m not good with strangers. Maybe it’s not a good idea for us to talk right now. You don’t mind, do you, if I stay in here? That would be okay, right? We could turn this back on, when it gets ready to go again. I’ll just take another little nap. A short one. You wouldn’t mind, would you? Do you know how to turn it on?”
Kim held the robe up toward her. “You don’t want to come out?”
The woman looked past the robe. “You have to go over to the computer . . .” She gestured at one of the monitors. “Over there. It won’t cycle again unless you press the—you know how it works, don’t you? Just turn it on, and I’ll be on my way. I mean, I’ll take a quick nap. How about if we just do the minimum here, okay?”
Kim didn’t move and Vin didn’t say anything.
The woman took a long breath. “Okay. So. You probably want to talk, then. Is that it? Questions? Answers?”
Kim nodded and the woman put her hands on the lip of the casket and strained to pull herself up. Vin stepped to her side and reached to support one of her arms. Her lip rose as she glanced at him, annoyed, but he helped her take a first, shaky step. Her arm was soft, fleshy but strong. Her skin had both an antiseptic smell and a faint whiff of sulfur.
Vin helped her find the sleeves of the robe. When she had it on she held her arms in close, shoulders hunched, and rubbed her palms against the soft fabric.
“Thanks,” she said. “I always prefer an empty room, though. You know. Nothing against you. I don’t know you two. I just don’t like having anyone here when I come out. You never know who—like, who the two of you—might be.”
“The two of us?” Kim said.
“Forget it. And there’s no one else, though, in . . . ?” She nodded toward the other two crèches and wiped curls of liquid off her forehead, pushed back her dripping hair.
“No,” said Kim.
“Safe upstairs?”
“Yes,” said Kim.
The woman walked toward the ladder. She put both hands on a rung.
“This damn ladder,” she said, leaning back and looking up, then half turning toward them. “It’s damn hard to get up after a long shot. I once came out and there was a body here. Must not have had the strength to climb. Or, maybe he was at the top and fell and broke something. But he’d been there for a long time. Months maybe. Skin gone to pieces. Maybe he bled out. Maybe. Or starved.”
Her name was Mona and when she began to fall asleep on her feet they showed her to Vin’s room. She barely made it to the inflatable mattress before falling and lapsing into a hissing slumber.
Vin took the blanket and one of the pillows from the master bedroom and lay them down on the floor in the dining area. Then he and Kim sat at the table and he told her what had happened to him in the crèche while they ate. After cleaning up, Vin lay on the floor while Kim surfed the web. Daylight leaked away.
He woke once when Kim grunted in frustration and stood up from the table, then woke again as she set a pillow down and stretched out on the floor beside him.
In the thinning dark of early morning, Vin saw Kim standing at the end of the table near Mona, who was eating pizza. As he closed his eyes again he heard Kim talking quietly, trying not to disturb him. Kim was thoughtful, cautious. Mona’s voice, though worn and hoarse, was slightly higher in pitch. She sounded casual, a little aggressive.
“You know,” Mona said at a normal volume, not concerned about waking him, “you got one of the nice ones here. Sophie’s here.”
He heard a chair scrape the floor and imagined Kim sitting and adjusting it. She said to Mona, “You were in there for a long time.”
“It’s not really like that. But, yeah, it has been a long time.”
“And, are you okay? I mean, outside of it? Do you need to adjust?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I don’t mean anything, but you still look a little tired. And shaky.”
“Are you saying I’m an addict?” There was an edge to the question.
“Umm, I’m not—well, is that what you think?”
“No.” When Mona spoke again the edge was gone. “I mean, I guess that things you do can be addictive. But if you’d just always prefer to do it and it doesn’t matter whether or not you do, then, what does the word mean, in that case?”
“Maybe, that it’s hurting you, and you should stop?”
Mona laughed, a soft snort. “Okay. Maybe. Fine.” After a moment, she asked, “How far have you gotten?”
“I’m sorry?”
“In the puzzle. How far have you gotten in the puzzle?” Maybe she sounded nervous.
“I don’t think we’ve gotten very far.”
“Do you have any soda?”
“No. Just water.”
“I got some,” said Mona. “But you have the notebook, right?”
“Yes.”
“But, you don’t know what it says?”
Kim was still keeping her volume low. “It sounds like you don’t either.”
“But you haven’t used it, the crèche?”
Kim must have shaken her head because Mona said, “But he has?”
Vin rolled onto his back and said loudly, “Yes, I have.”
“How long?” asked Mona.
“I’ve had three. One-day dreams.” Vin sat up, shook off the blanket and stood. “The one-day minimum, three times.”
“Dreams, huh?”
Vin walked to the chair beside Kim and sat down.
“The dreams feel strange,” he said. “But it’s when I wake up. I’m not sure my memory is right.”
“He says a cat appeared,” Kim added. “Out of nowhere.”
“She did,” Vin said. “Sophie. You said her name. But also . . .” he glanced over at Kim and then stopped talking.
“Oh, I see,” Mona said oddly, as if humoring him. “Sophie wasn’t here when you started?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Mona set the pizza crust down and leaned back in her chair.
“And,” Vin said, “this table, it wasn’t here. I mean, are you following? The table didn’t exist. Now it does. Do you know anything about that? Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah, it does.”
Vin put his fingertips on the table’s edge, feeling the neatly cut and smoothed lines of the wood. “Okay. Then this table could just appear here after I wake up from the crèche, out of nowhere? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It was always here,” Kim said. “His memories have been affected.”
Mona looked toward the window. A few lights were steaming out of the cloudy morning distance.
“You two know each other?” she asked, not looking at them.
“Yes,” said Vin.
“So, let me ask you—it was Vin, right? You knew, Kim, before you went into the crèche?”
“Yeah,” Vin said. He squeezed his lips together, then said, “But she was dead before I started.”
“Oh? She was— Oh, jeez. You poor babies.”
“Can you tell us what’s happening?” Kim asked.
“How can my dreams change things? I don’t understand how it works.” Vin placed his hands on the table, palms facing up. “What I remember,” he moved one palm, “and what’s in the world,” he moved the other, “are different. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Mona said, “‘Nerdean-is-a-fake,’ huh? That’s the password you’re using? You haven’t found the other one?”
“That’s the only one,” Vin said. “Wait, there’s another one?”
“Yeah. Did you try, ‘Nerdean-is-real?’”
“No,” Vin said, lowering his eyes, his shoulders falling forward. “Of course. No, I didn’t think of it.”
“Okay, then, after I’m gone. Wait until I go, and then, why don’t you give that one a try?” Mona’s voice was low and even, her gaze sloping like a gently descending road. “What year is this?” she asked. “What month?”
“What’ll it do?” asked Kim.
“You’re just going to have to try it. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I tried it really early on, on my own. Guessed there might be more than one. Just on a lark. No one told me how to do any of this shit. I just figured it out. And it worked. It totally fucking worked. And now everything is hosed up.”
“But, what is it?” Kim’s voice wavered as she leaned over the table.
“I don’t know a goddam thing. I could tell you what I know, but, it wouldn’t sound—it’s not believable. Use the password.”
“Kim was dead,” Vin said, “and her brother Bill was alive. And then I came out and Kim was alive but Bill was dead. We’re not anywhere close to believable anymore.”
Mona tilted her head a bit to the right and her jaw came forward. “I see. And did those two deaths—the brother’s and Kim’s—happen at about the same time, in a turn sort of thing, one or the other?”
“Yes,” Vin said.
“That’s how I think it works. Yeah. Most often.”
“How what works?” asked Vin.
“First, you have to know that when you go into the crèche, that you’re not dreaming. You do know that, right? You know it in your gut.”
Vin shook his head very slowly.
“Yes, you do. You do know it. Just like I did. You can tell. The edges aren’t rubbed off like they are in regular dreams, everything has weight, everything has a smell. When you figure out how things work, it feels matter-of-fact, like it does when you’re awake. It feels normal, right?” Vin nodded and Mona continued. “Yeah, you just haven’t believed it could be real. You’re probably too smart to believe that. Not like me. I’m not as smart as you. But we both know that it’s as real in there as it is out here. And when you come out, you remember things that you couldn’t know, never learned. And some things from inside the minds of the people you’re with.” Mona paused. “I mean, do you know what”—one of her hands gripped the side of the table—“do you know what the best, safest way for a woman to kill a powerful husband was in the city of Kota Gelanggi?”
“No,” said Vin.
“You didn’t even know there was a city with that name, did you?”
“No.”
“Neither did I. No one told me. I never read anything about it. But I’ve lived there.”
“What are you two talking about?” asked Kim.
“What I’m saying—I’m saying there is no safe way to kill your husband in the city of Kota Gelanggi. Yeah, and there are . . . penalties for a woman whose husband dies suddenly, or suspiciously. But that’s not the worst. Not even close.”
Kim stood abruptly, walked to a wall and turned on the room’s lights, washing away the thinning gloom of the underdeveloped day.
“I’m sorry,” Mona said, sitting back, “but it’s all real. What you do in the crèche really happens. Believe me, I know what’s real. I lost my family. I lost my two kids to that thing.” Vin’s hand covered his mouth. “So I know,” Mona said. “I’ve been trying to get back to them.”
“You’re saying that Vin’s memory of my brother is real?”
“Yes. Different things happen in different worlds.”
“Kim?” Vin asked. “Are you hearing this?”
“Yes.”
“The crèche is”—Mona appeared to reconsider—“look, I could go back in. You could both leave the house. Your life might go back to normal.”
“No,” Vin said.
Mona began talking in a swerving, disorganized way about her inability to understand what was happening to her. Eventually she took a deep breath, paused, and said, “I never really thought about time, but that’s where this thing starts. To us, to you and me, there’s a path we follow. We do one thing and then another and so on, moving forward. But it doesn’t really work that way. Everything that happens exists at the same time. And not just the past and future, but every past and every future, every one that’s possible. Everything that could possibly happen is real and is happening right now.”
Vin said, “You’re talking about alternate universes. Or one very complicated one.”
“Yes, and—”
Vin interrupted. “Infinite worlds, and every possibility exists. That machine—nothing could ever do what you’re saying.”
Kim said, “Don’t cut her off.”
“Well, then you know,” said Mona.
Kim had been sitting at the end of the table. Now she rose and walked a few feet, her sneakers making a soft scrik sound on the hardwood. She stood beside Vin, who was staring at the floor, his shoulders bunching up, and put a hand on his back.
Mona said, “You did things in the crèche, didn’t you, when you thought it was a dream? You figured out how to influence people, make them act, and you did things?”
“Yes.”
“Well, but, think it through,” Mona said. “Think it all through. Something terrible happened, right?”
And Vin remembered the brutal scissoring of time cutting on and off while Bucky Wright lay slashed and bleeding on the firm earth. If what Mona said was true—and it felt true—then Bucky’s family, and Matt’s, would be waiting for them to come home from their talk.
“Think it through,” Mona said again, recalling him. “Yes, the crèche sends you to other worlds, and what you do is real. But, everything that can happen does happen somewhere, so you don’t make a difference. Nothing you do makes a difference. All that changes is you. What you are. The crèche isn’t about doing something. It’s about being something, and living with yourself.”
“But, I killed them both.”
Kim said, “You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Yeah, he did,” Mona said. “Sure, we all do. We’re all a part of things that are larger than us, that don’t even consider life and death at all. I mean, it’s a privilege to even think like that, about whether or not to kill. We get to do that because we’re limited, because we have our own perspective, our minds. But we’re a part of a thing so large that the question doesn’t even exist if we don’t put it there. So you decide to go hiking with a friend. You stand together near the edge of a cliff and look out at a beautiful view. There are worlds where one of you or both of you fell and died. You were the one who decided to go hiking. You killed yourself and your friend.”
“That’s wrong,” Kim said.
“I agree, but it’s how things are. Everything happens, it doesn’t matter whether it’s meaningful or not. Look, I made mistakes too. I live with them. They matter to me. But what you find out when you use the other password is that we just live inside all of this, all of these possibilities, like air. You can’t stop these things.”
“Kim is alive now.”
“And you can’t see the worlds where she’s not anymore. When you make choices they matter to you, they matter to her. But they really don’t matter because every possibility happens. Look, that’s all I know.”
Kim said, “What is the crèche?”
“I’ve read everything about it backward and forward. You get to a point where you have to. When you try that other password you’ll find documents that say that consciousness, your—your feeling of things—is a basic part of reality. The crèche makes your consciousness go to another world.”
“How can that be?” Kim asked. “I saw his body. He stayed in there.”
“No, it’s about your consciousness. The crèche can’t move your body.”
“How does it decide where you go?” Vin asked.
“At first, I thought that was random. But I’ve done it enough. I think there are patterns. It connects with something and you go to certain situations almost as if your feelings aimed you. I think that’s why they call it a ‘shot.’ Because it’s aimed. Sometimes the aim seems obvious, sometimes it’s not.”
“I don’t just go anywhere. I’m always inside people’s heads,” Vin said.
“Yeah. The crèche turns your consciousness into probability. Probability doesn’t exist in a single world. A person in another world somehow notices you, their consciousness connects to you, so then you are in the place you were noticed. That’s where you go. It can happen, I think, when the person you go to is sort of looking for things they wouldn’t normally see, when they’re open, so, a moment of crisis, a really emotional experience, for example. You become a part of their experience.”
“I don’t believe it,” Vin said with a faint stroke of anger.
“Well, don’t believe it then. I don’t care. But you felt it, didn’t you? And I just explained that feeling, didn’t I?”
If he accepted what she was saying, then Matt Deaumont and Bucky Wright were dead. Gao Cheng was lying in the dark torturing himself because Vin wanted to make him do something, and the euphoria of the Empire’s war council as they chose to attack the Dardanelles, the elation and certainty that Winston Churchill felt, that and the carnage it led to, all of it was real.
“But what about the changes,” Kim said, “when he wakes up?”
“The changes. I’m sorry, but those are real too. That’s a thing that no one expects. I’ve never met anyone who understood at the beginning—”
“You keep talking about other people,” Vin interrupted. “Who? Who are they?”
“They’re people, like us. People who go into the crèche.”
“But, where are they, then? They’re not in this house,” Kim said.
“It’s because of the way it works. To move you, it changes the state of your consciousness, so you have a probability of being in many places, like how an electron works. But it has to do the same thing to get you back, which means the machine, the crèche, has to let go of you, because your consciousness isn’t in one world anymore. And, because there are infinite worlds, you never get back to the one you started in.” As Vin processed the words, Kim’s hand pressed deeper into his shoulder. Mona continued, “Sometimes the differences between worlds are small, things you’d never notice, sometimes they’re huge. In some worlds, other people have tried the crèche, so there are people in the house, or the caskets. You do this enough, you meet people, but I’ve never seen you two before.”
“We’re in other worlds,” Kim said, like she’d known it all along.
Mona said, “But, it’s hard to say what’s you exactly, isn’t it? If there are different versions on infinite worlds.”
Vin’s head hurt, as if a murder of crows were shouting into an angry day. “That’s not possible.”
Mona rewarded him with an exaggerated look of surprise. “Possible? You know all about that now, do you?”
“Wait a minute,” Kim said, “You go in—”
“Think about it like a box of chocolates,” Mona said, “or chocolate covered cherries, with one of those slotted plastic things to hold them in place. Every candy is the same but slightly different. You open the box, spill them all out, then put them back in. The candies are your consciousness, the plastic slots are the bodies in different worlds. None of the candies go back in the same slot they started in.”
“But what about his memories?” Kim said. “His memories are in his brain. That can’t just change. They’re part of his physical brain.”
“She’s right,” Vin said. “Kim’s mind and her memories, and her body for that matter, they’ve always all traveled through time with her. Everything has stayed together. There’s never a chance of a mismatch.”
“Yeah, but that’s not how it works, though. That makes it sound like memories are a thing that you can take with you or leave behind, but they’re not. Memories are a kind of interaction between all the things you are in a particular moment. Every time you remember something, you’re really creating a new experience. That experience depends on what happened to you in the past, but there’s nothing unique about that. Everything depends on what happened in the past. Memories aren’t really different. Because each memory is a new experience, there’s no way it can be a mismatch with what you are now, in the way you’re thinking. The fact that you’re in a new world probably does change your memories, but there’s no way for you to know how. I mean, it’s a kind of mystery, right? If you go that deep, you always find a mystery.”
“Not with technology,” Vin said. “That’s just lazy thinking.”
“Okay, how about this then.” Mona’s jaw jutted again and her eyes narrowed. “I’m not just saying if there was a crèche it might work this way. I’m asking myself, what the hell is going on with this thing? What I told you is as close as I can come. I’m sharing it with you because you asked. And by the way, lots of things people make, they don’t know exactly how they’ll work.”
After a moment, Kim said, “We did ask.”
“You believe I wasn’t born in this world,” Vin said.
“Well, the idea of world almost doesn’t make sense. But, to answer what you’re asking, then no, you weren’t. And I wasn’t either. But this world could be pretty much identical to where we were born. I mean, maybe exactly the same except one cherry blossom ten or ten thousand years ago, or one moment in a different galaxy a billion years ago. On the other hand, maybe most things here are different except for things about you. I do think that the more shots that I do, the bigger the changes are when I come back.”
“I’m not hallucinating,” Vin said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“You’re not,” said Kim.
Mona said, “I’ve left notes after really bad shots, to warn other people, but there are still infinite worlds without the notes, so. But the good news is that you usually seem to come back to a place close to the one you left.”
“But”—Vin was trying to fit his experience into what Mona had said—“why would the designers, why would Nerdean, construct a system with so many terrible flaws? How can it all be so fucked up?”
Mona shook her head. “It’s tech. I don’t know.”
“And so, you’re saying that,”—at the curdling sound of Kim’s voice, Vin twisted in his chair; Kim’s face was tense with a dawning realization—“that this Vin isn’t my Vin. You’re saying my Vin went into that thing, and that he’s never coming back. And this is someone else.”
“I think some people might see it that way,” Mona said. “But you don’t have to see it that way. You could also think of it just like, Vin made a decision, and it changed him.”
“But, you’re saying I wasn’t born in this world.”
“That body was. Maybe you’ve had some different experiences than the person born with it, but you’re close enough to fool the crèche, and for the crèche to fit you into that body.”
“Musical chairs,” Kim said.
“Yeah.” Mona nodded. “With bodies. Look, I need to get back in there.”
They couldn’t change her mind. At one point, upset and clearly feeling badgered by people she’d only just met, she rounded on Vin, asking him why he had gone in the last time, after he knew there were risks. The two of them were alone. Kim didn’t want to have anything more to do with the crèche, so she hadn’t come down to Nerdean’s office.
“I was trying to find Bill. I wanted him to come back, like Kim did.”
“See, that’s what happens,” she said. “That’s why everybody goes in. To get back what they lose. But maybe nobody ever does that. Maybe you can’t.”
“Why are you going back in?” Vin asked her.
“I lost my two kids. If it’s possible to find them and I don’t try, then what am I? Why am I alive?”
Before she got in, as she was standing naked, heavy and sallow, a kind of weariness radiating from her as if her concerns could dissolve worries about vulnerability or self-consciousness, she said, “Listen, I want to tell you one more thing. Give me back the robe. I’m cold.”
He lifted it off the chair where she had dropped it and handed it to her. She put it on, and ran a hand through her short, tangled hair. “You should know something, about me.”
She sat near him and put a hand on his knee for a moment, then lifted it and leaned back in the chair. “I found this place, maybe four years ago, my time. I think. I don’t know. Maybe a little over a year ago your time. Time on a shot isn’t always the same. Anyway, none of that matters. It was all in a galaxy far away. So I went into the crèche. My husband and I had been fighting, and I wanted to dream. I wasn’t smart, like you. I took a long shot right away, a week. Some things happened. You know what kind of things can happen. When I came out after that first time, I didn’t know what was real. And then, my husband didn’t believe what happened to me, when I told him. I couldn’t really believe it either, so I don’t blame him. But he wanted me to take medicine. I guess I believed I might be going crazy, but I also felt like, after what I had seen, I felt like nothing at all was real. You know? That all this was an illusion. So I set my house on fire. And, I killed—I lost my two kids. The fire did it. They burnt all up.”
She stopped talking. She stared at him for an uncomfortably long time, as if he might say something that would explain what had happened to her.
“I’m going to go into the crèche again,” she said. “And I’m going to find them. I am. But, what I want to tell you, is to warn you, I guess. I don’t know who will come out of it the next time this body wakes up. There was a very long time when I wasn’t a good person. If I come out like that . . . The thing is, I’m not sure that you’re safe with me. Even now. As I am. I mean, me right now. And I guess the truth is, whoever comes out of there next time, you might not be safe.”
“What should I do?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? On the one hand, nothing matters, because everything that could be done is done. On the other hand, everything matters, everything we do. Because it matters to you, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She stood, stepped forward so her back was to him and dropped the robe onto the floor of the office.
“Joaquin’s in this world, isn’t he?” she asked, not turning to face him.
“Yes, I guess so,” Vin said.
She started climbing carefully into the third casket. When she was in, as the LED lights on the casket started blinking she said, “Vin, don’t let Joaquin know what’s down here.” A whirr as the door began to lower. “Don’t let him know,” she said again, “and maybe things will be okay.”
A week later, Joaquin sat on the other side of the big table, facing Vin and Kim. He was not quite as put together—his hair not as perfectly set, lock on lock, his clothes not as immaculately formed—as Vin remembered. He seemed sad, and Vin noted that the table didn’t surprise him. But then, Joaquin and Kim were from this world. Vin was the interloper.
“So you haven’t found anything?” Joaquin asked a second time. Vin had told Kim that Mona warned them about Joaquin, and now Kim was sitting with her arms folded, giving Joaquin a bit of a stink-eye, though she wasn’t openly hostile.
Vin wanted to be done with Joaquin, who now scared him a little. He wanted more time alone with Kim.
“That’s right,” Vin said. “I think there might be an electrical short somewhere. Inside the walls.”
“I see. And I wonder, have you found any written material, any records anywhere in the house? Anything at all? Any notes or diagrams that might have been forgotten or left behind, accidentally? Or on purpose?”
“No,” Vin said, shaking his head as if he were reviewing everything that happened over the last few months. “No. I would have mentioned anything like that. Just empty.”
Joaquin placed his hand on the leather portfolio that lay on the table in front of him. “This is, um, an interesting place in our relationship then.”
“How so?”
“Well, at this point in your custodial responsibilities, I have been authorized, or rather required”—a house alarm began clanging loudly outside and Joaquin took a deep breath—“I am required to offer you a choice.”
Vin glanced at Kim but she was watching Joaquin.
“What choice?”
“I’m required, by my contract, to inform you that the home—this house—is soon going to be changing hands.” Kim made a small noise of concern, a soft gasp. “If we do not hear from Nerdean within a month, I am required to sell the home. That would mean that you would have up to two more weeks of residency. This requirement becomes effective if a very specific additional condition is not met.”
“Okay.”
“The additional condition,” the alarm was still going and Joaquin shifted nervously in his seat, “is that the house will be sold if you choose not to accept it as a gift.”
Kim’s arms dropped to her sides and she leaned forward. “What?”
“What?” Vin asked at almost the same moment. As Joaquin smiled stiffly in response, Vin said, “Can you explain?”
The house alarm stopped and the sudden quiet lifted Joaquin’s voice. “Of course, I understand it’s a surprise. Nerdean didn’t want anyone house-sitting. I’ve told you that. But she did contemplate the possibility, within my employment contract. The contract is very complex but incredibly well written, marvelously consistent. It is sui generis, a work of art. A thing of beauty that forks with natural inevitability like the limbs of a tree, each new path defining distinct possibilities, each splitting further into new contingencies until in aggregate they form a catalog of every foreseeable possibility within a specific district of the law. It is a document I am grateful to have a relationship with. If there were a museum for contracts, then this contract, this incomparable document, would be its prized possession. I have been so hoping to meet her.” He cleared his throat. “I have even considered breaking the terms so that I could ask a colleague to sue me, if only to test her magnificent contract in court, where its full power might begin to be admired.” He laughed weakly. “I’m sorry. I’ve devoted my life to these things. The simple truth, which I’m sure Nerdean must have anticipated, is that I will abide by the spirit and letter of the contract if only out of respect for the intelligence that created it.
“But, and I didn’t tell you all of this earlier—in a situation in which I believed that the, um, privacy, of the home might potentially be compromised, such as with the possibility of a break-in, then I had the latitude to arrange to employ a house sitter, to protect the house and, of course, to provide companionship for Sophie. In my judgment, employing a house sitter seemed like the correct thing to do. And, Vin, when your father told me about your situation with your company, I thought you would be an excellent choice. An intelligent, resourceful young man. As you know, I hoped you might learn something about the unusual utility bills, and the odd electronics upstairs, which—they do appear somewhat suspicious. Am I not correct?”
“Yes,” Vin said, “that whole setup is really strange. Like Nerdean was trying to hide something.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought as well, and so I hoped you would tell me if you discovered anything of relevance.” He was almost pleading.
“You couldn’t just hire someone to look at the house?” Vin asked, though he knew the answer.
“No, as I have said, that was forbidden.” Joaquin leaned back, put both of his hands in his lap and nodded slowly in an exaggerated way. “But, you see, I believe Nerdean also anticipated the possibility that I might use the clause that allows for house-sitting as a ruse, if you will, to bring in a gifted and curious individual to inspect the home.” He nodded at Vin. “And so I did. So I did. Her remedy, in such a case, was to essentially fire me by having the house change ownership. When your father first told me of your situation, I felt the risk would be warranted. I had faith in you. But . . . And, we find ourselves here. She is a very determined person, Nerdean. And, perhaps, spiteful.”
So Nerdean had used Joaquin and that contract to emboss her will onto the present. Vin was thinking through the implications of owning the house, and didn’t respond to Joaquin’s wistful bitterness. No matter what Nerdean intended or Mona had said, Vin now wanted to tell Joaquin about the crèche.
“So,” Joaquin continued, “the present state of affairs is that you will have two days to make a decision: whether you will accept the gift or not. If you accept, the paperwork is already prepared. We’ll make a legal transfer. There’s a condition that requires that you not resell the house for a minimum of ten years, and asks that you never resell it at all. The condition is in the contract, but once you have the title, it becomes merely an emphatic request. Though you will need to agree—verbally, in my presence—before receiving the title. And, of course, I must tell you that I’m sure Nerdean hoped you would never sell it. She may yet return, though you would be under no obligation to her. If you decide to reject the gift, then you must move out within two weeks and I will place the house on the market in thirty days.”
“Before I make a decision”—he turned to Kim and paused midsentence. Her face was set, worried.
“Yes?” asked Joaquin.
Kim was staring, trying to tell him something. He lost the thought he had been pursuing, said, “I’m not sure, I need to think about it.”
Joaquin seemed to be waiting for something more definitive, so Vin added, “It’s been a real pleasure living here.”
“Is that what’s giving you pause? Gratitude?”
“Yes,” Vin said. “I think. I’m just surprised. And I’m trying to process it, I guess.”
After Joaquin left, Kim seemed panicked. She started talking when the door clicked shut.
“He’s going to give you the house?”
“The contract says he has to, but I think I should tell him about the crèche.”
“But if you tell him, he might not give you the house.”
“You want him to give me the house?”
“Of course I do. It’s beautiful. And didn’t Mona tell you not to trust him? Not to tell him? That he might be dangerous?”
“I don’t know whether we can trust Mona.”
They had walked to the dining table. “We could live here,” Kim said.
“What do you mean?” Vin couldn’t bring himself to repeat the word we.
“This house is big and empty,” she said. “It’s a little spooky, but it’s incredible.”
“What did you mean though?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not trying to push anything. But, if things did work out . . . This decision is important. And, Vin, I need to tell you, I’m”—she stopped herself, but for Vin the moment had the sudden feel of clarifying logic, as if all of the puzzles of daily living had been swept away on a wave of certainty.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Kim started again. “I see what Mona meant when she said that the thing down there is just like a decision. You are the person I know. You smell the same, you look the same, you talk the same. We remember our childhoods together.”
Vin accepted the house and didn’t tell Joaquin about the crèche.
In this world, Kim and Vin had been dating for two months. She already knew things about him and she treated him with the familiarity of a childhood friend. In the bedroom, she moved as if ignoring the effect of the crèche, and he was both thrilled and distanced by the assumed intimacy, the collision between dream and memory. The full effect was both awkward and erotic, their desire reconnecting them, their bodies familiar and strange.
In the first weeks, Kim talked more freely about her life after Bill died. After barely graduating from high school, she’d started waitressing and she’d saved money obsessively. “I started thinking about what I really wanted and getting rid of every part of me that wouldn’t help with that.”
She was frightened of falling into the kind of poverty that she assumed led her biological parents to give her and Bill up, and she was frightened of becoming what her adoptive mother had said of Bill after he died, “a nothing, nobody.” Those words spoken by their mother, a blunt articulation of something that Kim had suspected her parents of feeling, had dug a trench through that moment in Kim’s life.
She knew it wasn’t quite fair to blame her parents for not saving Bill, but she decided to keep her distance from them. Reading insulated her from the requirements of survival and she specialized in the kind of thick, translated novels that excite academics. In her sole concession to pharmacology, she sometimes downed sleeping pills to avoid the hours after work. After two arid years on her own, she enrolled at a community college in Communications and Digital Arts.
“One thing I did right was to walk, a whole lot. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but I remembered those jazzy, rambling walks you and Bill did around the city when we were kids. I loved that so much.”
She told him that skydiving had been a turning point. She knew when she learned about tandem dives—two people harnessed together rejecting the fable of stability—that she would use a jump to say goodbye to her brother. The stranger who mentioned it in an offhand way became her only friend for three months, and two tandem and three static line jumps.
It took years of inching forward at community college before she accepted the utility of student loans and transferred to Western Washington University.
“But I’ve already told you all of this,” she said.
For Vin, Kim possessed a glow of germinal irreality that set her apart from the strictly factual world. Her existence demonstrated an incoherence in space and time, a contradiction in the structure of the universe. And he had been changed by his experiences in the crèche, his mind darkened by the shadows of the events and longings he had encountered there. There were moments when he observed himself like a third person, enjoying his time with Kim in a way that he wouldn’t have understood before he went into the crèche, almost as if it were a food they shared.
When she finally did say, “I’m pregnant,” he didn’t have the courage to tell her what he was really thinking—“the body that I’m in fathered your child, but I didn’t.” And anyway, she already knew that. She had brought it up during their conversation with Mona. And it really didn’t matter, did it? The child would be his. No matter who had fathered it, he would be its father.