Recap:
After stumbling through the Parallel by himself, Colton finds sustenance at a coffee shop that is stranger than fiction. Once refueled, he heads back to the houses on Hill Street and hears some activity. Following the noise, he is led to a room, opens the door to find a strikingly good looking woman and below is what follows…
And Onto Drop #05…
Kara was her name, and she had been here for two days, left to her own devices. Two days. That’s just about 48 times the amount of time Colton had spent thus far, and his head was already spinning. Surely her feelings and emotions were exponentially more compounded the longer she was separated from reality.
And what a reality she had lived. After exchanging pleasantries, Kara told Colton a little bit about herself in an effort to comfort him, more specifically, to get him to stop trembling. She was a teacher at an inner city middle school where she helped pre-teens stay on the straight and narrow despite external influences that seemed committed to their downfall. In the summers, she picked a spot on the globe, booked flights and accommodations, and then departed for the length of her vacation with zero thought of itinerary. She filled the white space with adventure and activities, then collected nick-nacks that helped to decorate her classroom for the following school year. She was a modern female Indiana Jones. These decorations always led to conversations with her students, and she used these moments to remind them that they weren’t victims of their immediate surroundings. Rather, there was an entire world out there waiting for them, should they choose to roam. Colton felt taken back by this. He had been a product of his environment for some time now. He moved from job to job aimlessly, acting like more of an observer than a participant in his own life. In juxtaposition, Kara was the director of her life. She was a doer, and she had done a hell of a job sharing it with her students. Over the years, she had such a profound impact on her kids’ lives. They would go on to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, policy makers and venture capitalists. She was quite satisfied with her career, but it always was a great surprise when her former students would visit her to share with her the impact that her classroom and teaching style had on their lives.
Colton always admired those who had zeal for what they did, career or otherwise. He was too timid to go out and find this for himself. While Kara was busy doing, Colton was preoccupied with waiting. Waiting for life to happen to him. They were the perfect paradox.
Hours had passed since their introduction and Kara had prepared some tea in her kitchen straight out of a 1960s diner. There were linoleum checkered floors, bright colored kitchen appliances and a small, peeling table nested in a banquette. At the head of the table, there was a miniature juke box where you could actually flip through old songs and it had a slot for nickels to be inserted. The booth butted against the window, but the view was opaque. Suddenly Colton’s stream of consciousness was interrupted by the whistling of a tea kettle on the stove.
“Herbal or caffeinated?” Kara asked him.
“What types of caffeinated teas do you… Actually, I’ll take herbal please,” he responded after recounting his exquisite Americano from earlier and knowing full well what too much caffeine does to his anxiety, which was already heightened considering the current situation.
“Peppermint okay?” She asked.
“Wonderful,” Colton answered.
Kara went for the booth and pressed her mug to her chest, like anyone does when they want to feel the comforting, warming sensation that only a piping hot cup of tea can give. Perhaps a nice cup of coffee on a slow morning can compare, but that is a whole different feeling. Colton went for the bench directly across so they could engage in proper face to face human conversation. Only, there was nothing proper about this situation at all. Both of them just had their worlds flipped upside down and were plucked from their respective locations and dropped in an alternate universe wherein they were the only two living, breathing humans around.
“So, excuse my language, but what in the fuck happened to me? How did I end up here, how did we end up here? Why did we end up here?” Colton was putting on a clinic for how to NOT open up a conversation with a stranger you just met. Kara was absolutely stunning, which shows how bent out of shape Colton was. Ordinarily, Colton would be mesmerized by a beauty like Kara’s which would result in far less vulgar language, fumbling over his words and injecting corny ice breakers into the conversation. Colton wasn’t acting like himself though, he wanted answers, and consequently he was blind to Kara’s beauty.
Still, Kara humored him, “I have theories, but that’s all they are, really. I taught middle school mathematics, so my exposure to quantum physics and quantum mechanics is quite minimal,” she responded.
“Dear God, quantum mechanics. That’s already further than I want to go. It sounds like the name of a shitty 80s band that competed with the Village People at a local battle of the bands, but the Village People won out and had a subsequent one hit wonder career. You mean to tell me that there’s no way this is a dream?” He asked.
“No.” She answered, absolutely. She kicked over his chair and he began to fall until he caught himself by grabbing onto the table.
“Your inner ear would have reacted to the feeling of you losing balance just now, and you would have woken up if this was a dream. I’m sure you’ve seen Inception, Leo describes it much better than I could hope to. I’ve been here for two days, and fallen asleep and woken up in that amount of time. How could you explain either of these two scenarios if this was a dream? These things are happening in real time, in this universe,” Kara explained.
“What do you mean in this universe? What universe is this?” Colton asked.
“That, I’m still working on, and now I have to go back to the drawing board since you showed up. This would have been much easier to explain if it was just me, traveling through space and time on an independent journey. Now that you’re here, there’s no telling what the catalyst was that brought us both here and how we are linked in some strange way.”
“Now that you’re here… Well don’t get too excited. I’m just the only other human in this fucked up place,” Colton responded.
“Right, and now you can help me. So what’s your story, where do you come from? And do you remember what you were doing before you came here?” Kara asked.
“Well that’s a loaded question. I mean, I was in the Army, then I got out and had a job as a general contractor, and that wasn’t very challenging so I took some classes and got a job as a data scientist. Then, I tried my hand as a gig worker and most recently, I decided to check in on my brother and maybe see about moving back to my hometown of Reno, Nevada. I was on the way to see my brother when I ended up here…” Colton explained.
“Well if that’s not the most depressing story I have ever heard. You expect me to believe you were just on a road trip and poof you ended up here? Care to add any more detail?” Kara questioned.
“Jesus, that’s pretty harsh, considering we just met. Well then, what’s your story?” Colton asked.
“Don’t have one. I was asleep, and then I was here. Besides, I pretty much told you my story already. You’re the newbie.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” Colton said.
“Try harder. Try to remember the very last thing you were doing,” She said.
“Okay, well I was on the road, obviously I had to make a couple stops to get from Buffalo to Reno. I stopped in Cincinnati, then St. Louis and then somewhere in New Mexico I stopped to get gas and that’s kind of it.” He clarified.
“See, progress… Can you remember anything else that happened at this gas station?”
“Not really, I mean I really am trying. I just remember a boom, a loud piercing sound, then I was here.” Colton answered.
“Was the sound close to you or in the distance?” Kara asked him.
“It was close. Like maybe two to five meters away, like an explosion or a bang of some sort. There was this sketchy looking guy I remember now. He asked me for some change and I looked at my wallet and saw that I had like 48 bucks to my name so I told him to get lost.” Colton explained.
“Get lost? Nice of you.” Kara questioned him.
“Well, those weren’t my exact words. I wanted to be firm and scare him away, but he wasn’t scared and then I saw that he was toting a gun. Oh shit, he had a gun.” He realized.
“Did he fire the gun? Was that the explosion? Colton, did he fire the gun at you?” She asked impatiently.
Now, after putting more thought into it, the sound wasn’t that of an explosion (Like C-4 or detonation cord that makes a loud boom), but rather it was a snap that seemed to echo everywhere, like a gunshot. In that moment, he recalled looking down the familiar barrel of an Beretta M9 pistol, which he had used at various ranges and was glued to his hip for the duration of a nine month deployment.
“Yes, he fired the pistol… We’re dead, we’re fucking dead. Oh God, I got to get the hell out of here.” He started to hyperventilate after reaching this conclusion.
“Colton, Colton! Colton!!” Kara screamed.
“Hold on, we’re not dead. At least I’m pretty sure we’re not dead. Everything is going to be okay. Remember the sensations I made you feel? Explain that if we’re dead.” She said as she jumped across the table and held him in her arms to console him. They were quiet for minutes until the silence was finally broken.
“We must be in an adjacent universe or timeline while the other versions of ourselves are figuring out whether they are dead or alive. The reality that is happening right now in front of us is only one version of reality. In fact, there are probably other versions of our lives happening as we speak. I am mostly concerned with getting back to one life in particular, which I’m sure you feel similarly,” Kara explained.
“So, can we get back? How do we get back?” He asked aggressively.
“I’m not sure how to answer that, but seeing as though we are both caught in the middle of this mess, it probably has something to do with us working together.” Kara said.
“Okay, I’ll bite. This is just truly unfathomable. Never in my wildest dreams… Well actually, this kind of reminds me of what I used to imagine as a kid.” Colton responded.
Kara stared back at Colton and after an awkward pause, she nudged him to proceed, “Do go on,” she smiled.
“Well, when I was really little, I used to tell my teachers and baby sitters elaborate stories about past lives that I had lived, and that I simply started life anew in this body. I told them that I was bound to do it again once I was done with this physical body. In another life I was a fisherman, in another I lived in Thailand, and another I was a doctor. My teacher’s just laughed and figured I had a strong imagination. But, as I got older, I always wondered if we simply lost touch with this relationship to the spiritual world because it was not regularly accepted by society. What if this feeling was strongest in the mind of a child because they were closest to that previous life, but then as time goes on that feeling grows weaker and is eventually lost due to societies rejection of the incarnate?”
“Wow, I always thought the same thing,” Kara exclaimed.
“Really?”
“Absolutely not. That may be the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. But, I never pictured myself traveling through the multiverse listening to Beastie Boys on repeat, so that theory doesn’t seem to far off anymore. There must be several versions of ourselves out there, we just have to get back to the lives we remember.” She explained.
“Not me,” Colton responded, “I wouldn’t mind starting all over. In fact, remembering the exact moment when I was shot, I was looking up to the sky at this gas station lying on my back thinking, ‘I don’t care, I’ve got nothing more to live for. I could die right now,’” he muttered.
“Wouldn’t that take away from the meaning of life? Isn’t our purpose to make peace with the painfulness of the present?” She questioned.
“I prefer the old adage, ‘Fuck it,’ you know? Why worry about the future, why worry about the past, hell why even worry about the present when you can just say fuck it,” Colton retorted.
“And how has that worked out for you, huh? Devoid of meaning, indifferent to life and death. You just admitted that you would start all over if you could. What would be different about your life, save maybe cosmetic details, if you started all over. You’d still have the same shitty outlook and the same outcome at the end of the day. You’re wrong. There is meaning, you just have to provide it yourself.” She responded, now getting extremely worked up.
“Interesting. All that being said, It’s not like I haven’t tried. I believed like you did once. Things just don’t work out for someone like me. When I try, I fail. When I fail, I fail hard, and everyone in my path is worse off for it. I could never make it work,” Colton concluded.
“Well, if you want to continue this pity party later, we can certainly unpack this another time, but for now let’s get back on track and see if we can get to the bottom of why we’re here. Maybe if we find the why, we can find the how. If we find the how, we may be able to find the route back. Let’s take a tour of our new digs. You were in the Army, right? What do you call that, gathering intel?” Kara jested.
“Do you have to sound so condescending? I guess you could call this gathering intel, but what you actually meant was more of a recon, as in reconnaissance. We will reconnoiter the area and see if we can find some intel for you, nerd.” He jokingly responded, knowing that would probably go over her head.
By the time the two stepped out of Kara’s front door, the sun was down. They had been in there for hours at a minimum. Although Colton was sure that he hated this woman, he couldn’t recall the last time he had spoken to a woman for so long and actually paid attention to the conversation. He stopped himself from giving the subject any more thought.
“I noticed five total houses when I was looking around earlier and you live on 48 Hill Street. I feel like I keep seeing that number everywhere.”
“What number?” She asked.
“48,” he responded.
“You live on 48 Hill Street, I had 48 bucks on me when I died and something else I saw recently had the number 48 on it. Must be some strange coincidence.” He explained.
“Hold onto that, there’s probably no such thing as coincidence in this world. For now, let’s start by going to one of the other 40 something Hill Street houses. Maybe there are others. If they aren’t there yet, maybe they’re coming.” She decided.
“Roger that. To Hill Street we go…” he said.
Thanks for this!