The morning dew enveloped the hills to make the world appear foggy as I strapped on my backpack and started out the bed and breakfast. I had spent three days there but the serenity of solitude I wanted was hard to come by. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw other lives, another world simulated for me. The peace I had anticipated when I moved out did not come, especially with the constant noise from neighbors and traffic.
I got up, and two days later began hitchhiking from town to town.. Restless, moving and searching. I wasn’t quite certain about what, although I guessed it must have something to do with compliance or regulation. Answers? Understanding? A part of me that I could accept in light of the broken pieces of memory filling my head now?
My mobile turned into my pocket – a tangible piece of life and the people that I once had. It seems I had woken up daily, just long enough to notice the growing number of notifications, but not actually reading them. Not yet. I wasn’t ready.
Sometimes, as I strolled along a country lane with my thumb out to hitch a ride in no particular direction, the device would buzz again. Much against my own wishes, I took it out and looked at the screen.
Chase: 37 missed calls, 52 unread messages
Alessandro: Twenty-five missed calls, eighteen unread text messages
Mom & Dad: 41 missed calls, 30 unread messages
The guilt struck me like a punch to the stomach; it took a lot of effort before I could continue walking. All of them looked sick with worry. Here I was, fleeing from the very people who I cherished and who in turn cherished me.
But how could I look at them when I could not look at myself?
An old rake of a diesel pickup drew to a stop alongside me, and the elderly gentleman with a lined, but benign face leaned out of the window. “Need a lift, miss?”
I thanked him and got into the car, watching as he walked around the vehicle and got into the driver’s side. It was not until we were on the road in the car with just myself and Chris that I felt free to allow my mind to wander back to what I used to have and where it was now.
Thanks to Chase and his encouragement and helpful thoughts on the matter. How many times had he stood by me, helping me in the lab, the time when all my energies were low? I mean, we were always inseparable, but now I would completely close him out when he could’ve helped me the most.
Alessandro, still an enigma, but someone who appeared to have the set of keys that could help me unlock the shattered world in which I was now so ill at ease. Would he be confident that he presented himself? A partner in different timespan, a protector of the multiverse? Or was he just another sign of whatever condition had come over me?
And my parents… God, my parents. To think that they were worried, scared, was almost too much to bear. The letter I’d sent would by now have reached them, but how far would that go? Or would it only mean raising a question or two, a concern or two?
‘You look so burdened like the whole world is on your shoulders, miss,’ the driver interrupted my daydream.
I looked at him and forced what I could only describe as a grimace to appear as a smile on my face. ‘Well, as much as that,’ I agreed.
He nodded sagely. Well, I’ve gone there myself one time or another. No one truly knows the strength and resilience of another person until walking them along their own path back to themselves.
The words he said echoed deep down in my heart more than I think he ever will realize. “How do you do it?” I said anxiously which came out as desperation in my voice. Some people wanted to know how I could negotiate for my life when I no longer even knew my own identity.
The old man then remained silent for several seconds, looking intently at the wheel with his crooked fingers. “As far as I’ve learned,” he said slowly, “the self is not discovered by escaping.” You are again found by stopping and by confronting things which are ‘you’.
I let those words roll over my head as we drove further into the country on the winding road. Was that what I was doing? Running away? Yes, I had told myself that I wanted to get my thoughts back, that the fog was stifling me and I needed to know and discern, but was I just running away from realities that I didn’t want to accept at that time?
If anything, my phone was ringing in my pocket at this very time, the perfect cue. I took it out and looked at the screen for what I believed was a good five minutes before making the next move.
I looked at the driver and said “I am going to pick this up”. I tried to be polite to the driver.
He raised the hand on the left as if in triumph and then dropped it like he were in a grand stand. “Be my guest. That must be the type of event that might be considered important, nevertheless.
Sweating and my heart racing, I went through the list of my contacts. Chase or Alessandro? Was it the friend who knew me before everything, the one who my parents wanted me to marry , or the various strangers who our conditions had brought us closer to.
In the end, I chose neither. Instead, I press the call button next to “Mom & Dad.”
Indeed, the phone hardly had time to make its first ring before the other end was answered. “Brianne?” My mother’s voice was full of emotion. ‘Oh there you are sweetheart!’
“Hello, Mom,” I said, touching my tear-filled eyes. “It’s me. I’m okay.”
I could hear as the phone was passed around, and I could hear her crying and yelling my father’s name. “Pumpkin?” Dad’s low growl that he obviously used to mimic a strong man. “Where are you? Are you safe?”
“I’m safe,” I assured them. “I’m… Since I have started moving through all this , I have been struggling to make sense out of some of these ideas. I saw your messages and wanted to say: I am really sorry for causing you all that stress. I hope it was clear that it wasn’t intentional.
“Oh, we want you to just come home, sweetie?” Mom begged. Whether it be a good time or a bad one, we can always face it side by side.
I shut my eyes to wish it was that easy. “I can’t. Not yet. But I will, soon. I promise.”
We continued speaking for a few more minutes, me expressing to them several times that I was fine, and wasn’t in any danger.
I was too embarrassed to explain exactly what I was doing how could I, when I didn’t really know myself? but I told them I’d write soon, that I was okay.
When I got off the phone, I felt a load off my back. It was not gone entirely, but it was… lighter. Manageable.
The old man who was driving the truck they were carrying nodded at me in approval. “Family?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Family.”
Moments later, we were silent for some more time as he finally dropped me at a small bus terminal. As I thanked him for taking me there, he gave me a very probing stare.
“Remember what I told you,” he said to me. At times, it is better to neither move forward nor backward. Someone said, ‘Run away from what you’re trying to hide from.’
I simply gave a nod of my head as he drove off, still groaning at the words of what he had just said. Stand up to whatever is making your face turn the other way. However, what was I really escaping from? Some kind of shattered reflection of other lives? It seemed to me that the ‘responsibility’ Alessandro had been talking about all along? Perhaps I was still unaware of it, even to myself, or was there something else something far more profound?
Sitting on a bench outside the bus station, my phone was ringing again. Two new messages today: Chase and Alessandro. Finally, I took a deep breath and opened them.
Chase: “Brianne, please. No matter what you’re experiencing, let me assist you. This is where you don’t have to be alone.”
Alessandro: There you go again with your little game, Bri; there’s very little time left now. We all need you.” He repeated ” I need you.”
Two messages, two pulls on my crazed mind. The life I ever lived, the life which could be designed for me. How could I possibly choose?
But as I sat there, the sun shining and toasting the tips of my hair and my cheeks, I remembered something. Perhaps it was the case that their paths never diverged and that maybe I didn’t have to choose. Perhaps the answer to the riddle as to who I was was, who I could become was in accepting both parts of myself. The classic good girl geek gone bad: The scientist and the Multiuniverse warrior. The daughter and the savior.
With trembling fingers, I typed out a single message and sent it to both Chase and Alessandro:
“I’ll be back soon. Having made this commitment, there is something I need to do first.
When entering the send button, I really felt that I had something to do. I knew my direction, and what I had to do in order to get there. The only place which remained intact throughout all those shattered memories, all those lives I’ve possibly been.
Home.
No, not my parents’ home, not today. But to the place where it gelled, or where it started. The lab where I had been introduced to the idea that there could always be more, everything was infinite, as one could imagine.
It was time to stop running. Finally, it was time to turn my face towards whatever fate had in store for me, whatever truth could be ferreted out of the fog in my head. What stunned me was the realization that I couldn’t do this on my own and I, of course, was right.
Subsequently, getting on a bus that was going in the direction of a city, the life I left behind, I had this strange serenity wash over me. Whatever the sequel to this story, whatever disclosures or experiences I was to undergo, I was prepared for them.
Brianne, who was a daughter, a friend and perhaps something rather more, was now going home.