Or Not to Be (11 page)

“I am thinking, Mom. That’s all I seem to
be able to do here. But I can’t control my thoughts, what I watch, where I go.
There is no focus. I just jump around and around.” I’m frustrated. It’s hard
for me to a
dmit my confusion
to my mother.

I can feel a mom-smile and something like
a hug in her voice when she says, “Try not to worry about how long things seem
to take. Gaining control takes practice. You have to let yourself adjust. And
when you’re truly ready to depart, you’ll know.”

“Well, what I know for sure is that I
don’t feel ready to do anything like departing, whatever the hell that means. I
want to watch more of my family as their time actually passes.”

“I understand. These things are all in
your power to choose. When you have decided to depart or need to ask more
questions of me, I’ll be here.”

Mom leaves, I think. I feel alone again
and a little guilty to be relieved by her absence. I get a break from the hot
seat imposed by her presence. Free from her supervision, I let myself drift in
time and space, curious about where and when I’ll end up, but relaxed enough to
just let it happen.

14

The sun comes in
through the sheer lacy curtains and lights the room.
It’s early, but the baby usually wakes by now. Under the frilly edge of the
pink blanket all that shows is the seashell bottom of a tiny foot. I put my
hand on her back, just a feather of a touch, the way my mom always did to just
make sure the baby was breathing. Just a little pat to make her stir and make
me relax.

But she doesn’t move.

I reach down and rub the little foot and
find it cold. I unwrap the rest of her tiny body and turn her onto her back.
She is so still, like she is just sleeping. I lean down to her face and listen
for breathing.

Nothing.

The scene plays like a slow-motion silent
movie with viscous momentum. A man comes in the room. He is a grown-up version
of my son. I hand the still baby to him. He begins CPR. I watch for endless
minutes as he breathes into her tiny face.

Nothing.

We have lost another one.

| | | |

“
Mom! Mom! What
is this?”
I scream into the endless void.

“Oh, Anna, I’m sorry. Looking to the
future can hurt,” she says.

“That’s the
future? I thought it was a nightmare.”

“Quite like
a nightmare.”

“My Joey is
only five, and I just saw him, and he must have been at least twenty-five.”

“Of course, Anna, he must get older.”

“I get that.
That’s not the problem. I mean, that was horrible. But, Mom,
I
was there in the future. I wasn’t dead. Tell me how
that’s possible.”

“I didn’t think we’d have to get to this
so soon, but you always were a questioner. Okay, get ready because you have to
think. The last time we talked, you had questions about time and about your
antimatter after you died. I thought you understood all of that quite well.”

“I think I do, Mom. On Earth, time just
marches on. Time stops on the dead side. There is no time. Without the
constraints imposed by our faulty concept of time, we are free to travel
through time just like we always travel through space. Time travel. That would
explain why I could stay in slow time and watch my family in the day after my
death, or speed up time to see the future. But I did not voluntarily do this. I
did not speed up on purpose to see the future. It just happened.”

“No, it did not just happen, dear. You decided to do it,
whether you are aware of that or not. Light speed travel is instantaneous. The
newly dead need many experiences to comprehend it and
learn to navigate.”

“Okay. Whatever.
I’ll get better at it.” I’m flustered and confused. “But that’s still not the
point. How was I
there
? What was my matter doing in
the future? I mean, I thought it was just my imagination, just a nightmare, but
it was real? I want to know how I was
there
!”

“You must have chosen to be there,” she
declares.

“What does
that
mean?” I roar.

Silence.

Infinite silence, deep and chilling. This
quiet is unfathomable to the living because on Earth, in life, when there is a
quiet time that we call silence, there’s always some sound. The wind. A
cricket. Breathing. A motor. Someone burps. A bird tweets. But on the dead
side, in the near vacuum that is the space between the densely packed particles
of planets and moons and stars, there is so much nothingness, emptiness, that
it is unimaginable until it is experienced.

Yet I can still read this silence: my
mother is pissed.

She never dealt well with confrontation.
Once when the principal called from school to report that Michelle and I had
cut our afternoon classes, my mom hung up on him. I need to be more circumspect
in my questioning.

“Sorry. Mom?” Where the hell did she go
this time?

Nothing. Infinite black space twinkles its
suns and stars and waits along with me. It’s peaceful and tempting to just
relax into it. But I need to understand. How was I alive in the future?

“Please come back, Mom,” I beg. “I need
your help here. This would make up for so many years when Michelle and I had to
figure out everything for ourselves.”

“What are you blubbering about? I always
answered all of your questions!”

“Only if you were in the country to hear
about them.”

“Aw. I did travel a lot. Those were the
best perks of my full professorship. Sabbaticals in Europe and Japan. That was
my Earth-heaven.”

Good, she was back. Time to charge back
into it, this time without pissing her off. Tricky. I have to get her to focus.
The woman is still brilliant but, oh, so exasperating.

“I just need to ask some simple questions.
Little questions. Slowly. Can you give me simple answers?”

“I’ll try. Shoot.”

“Have you ever traveled to the Earth
future?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do it on purpose, or did it just
happen to you?”

“I thought it was just happening at first.
But after a few terrifying trips, I wanted some control over it, so I tried to
figure out what I was doing to make it happen.”

“What were you doing?”

“Well, I liked to pop in to check on you
and the kids and even that awful Mr. Ed you married.”

“Good to know,” I interrupt, “but what
were you doing to make it happen?”

“Well, you see, when you flit around at
the speed of light enjoying your personal exploration of the entire universe,
it’s easy to lose track of Earth time. My goodness, once I stopped back and the
world was covered in a thick, black cloud. I didn’t dare go into that mess. I
hoped it was the far-distant future and popped away.”

“Tell me about this popping that you do.
Do you control that?”

“In a way, yes. I
just think of where I want to be, and if I think of
when
I want to be, too, I usually hit it right. But if I
just think of where, like Philadelphia with your dad, I could end up in the
delivery room pushing out your sister. Ugh. That’s a nasty place to find
yourself surprised.”

“So, if I want to
be with Eddie and Bethany, but don’t think of
when,
I could end up in the past, present
or
future?”

“That’s
right, dolly. See, you’ve been so focused on your death that you’ve been
hovering within days of it. But when you asked about future travel, I figured
you were onto it. I hope I warned you adequately. Peeking into the future can
be appalling.”

“All right, that’s scary, but I think I
understand a little better about controlling where and when I go. But you still
haven’t explained how I was there in the future. I was alive there. Mom, how
did I do that?”

“Honey, the mysteries of life and death
and outer space and all the contradictions of physics have baffled humans since
they became a conscious species. They have invented myths to explain every
natural phenomenon they have encountered, and they cling stubbornly to those
myths well after they fully and scientifically understand. I tried to help you
keep your mind open in life to every possible answer to all of life’s
questions. That was my motherly duty. It turns out there are even more
questions to be answered in death. The universe is infinitely more complex than
our beloved little planet. You are just beginning your journey of questions.
Let the answers come to you. I can reassure you that the answers are there, but
I cannot explain it all to you. Full understanding of your choices is a
personal mission. And even when you do understand your choices, I can’t help
you make the right one. Each choice is right.”

“What kind of choices? What are you
talking about?” I demand. I know perfectly well that her professor speeches are
cloaked in smoke and mirrors to cover up when she intends to deliberately dodge
my questions. I also recognize that she is too stubborn to be forced out from
behind the smoke when she wants to hide.

I feel a mom-hug in her voice as she
assures me, “You’re my smart girl. You’ll see.”

She leaves.

So I try it again. I let myself think of Eddie and wait,
curious to see where these thoughts take me.

15

The street is so crowded
with people and filth that, though he has a firm grip
on my hand, I have trouble keeping up with Eddie. On his other side, Bethany
holds tight to his arm as he pushes through the crowd to the barred front door
of a hotel. He bangs on the glass and shows his medical identification, and we
are allowed inside. It is an enormous luxury to find a place to stay for the
night.

We sleep in our clothes. Eddie wakes me
before dawn. “Anna. We have to get out of here.”

I drag my old body up, grab my backpack,
and the three of us leave the safe shelter of the hotel. Bethany is older—maybe
in her thirties. We find a crowded restaurant that serves weak coffee and
toast. We stay there the entire day because the street is closed, barricaded by
what appear to be military police. With no working satellites, our cell phones
are useless. Eddie and Bethany will not be able to get to the wounded today. We
wait, cold and hungry, listening to gunshots, worrying all afternoon.

An hour after dark, we sneak out a side
door. We lose Eddie in a crowd. Men grab me and Bethany and pull us back into
the restaurant. They throw me to the floor and drag Bethany away through a door
to what must be the kitchen.

Eddie comes back and finds me on the
floor.

“They took her, Eddie!”

He bangs on the door, yelling that Bethany
is a nurse and is under protection for her skills.

I meet the eye of a stranger who hands me
a gun.

The kitchen door cracks open, and Eddie is
pulled in. I follow.

When they accuse Eddie of theft, he hurls
an empty glass bottle at a burly man and hits him in the face. I slip past in
the fight to where Bethany sits, bruised and crying, while two men argue about
what to do with her. Without hesitation, I pull the trigger, blowing a hole in
the wall. Eddie grabs Bethany and pulls her out.

I lower the gun.

We run
.

| | | |

What the hell
was that?

“Quite like a nightmare, I know,” my
mother’s voice soothes.

I demand, “Was that one real, too?”

Mom sounds exasperated when she replies,
“What does ‘real’ mean? The meaning of the word is as elusive as always. Layers
of time and reality allow for infinite possibilities, Anna. Not all of them are
pleasant, and not all of them occur.”

“Another nightmare on the dead side? Help
me get away from it.”

“The effect is quite like when you woke
from nightmares in life. You have to rise up to full consciousness and will
yourself away from it. Declare a time or a place, or both.”

“Just bring me back to my real life.” I
almost laugh. What is real life?

“That’s too vague. Pick a place.”

“I don’t know—how about just take me home
again?” I don’t care at all. I just want to get away. Far away from the dark
feeling of that bad dream.