Precipice

"You remember when we had to explain to Tim what a games console was?" Elaine asked, taking a sip of her tea.

His other self looked over at her. "Hmm?" Her voice was more muffled than ever and drowned by the noise of the TV.

Elaine turned to him. "Oh, Randall... hearing aid! You've got it turned off."

He put his hand to his ear and made a quick small movement, and suddenly the world had sound in it. The TV surged with volume. Randall could hear music coming from one of the appliances in the cabinet; and the grey panels on the walls were giving off the quietest of surging hums.

"What were you doing, just watching it in silence?" Elaine asked, in a slightly mocking voice.

"Oh, I was just... thinking, you know? Besides, we've seen this episode so many times now... can barely tell when it's silent. I just hear it anyway."

"I know what you mean," she nodded.

Randall paid attention to the show on TV for the first time but couldn't really tell anything about it.

"What are you thinking about, love? Everything alright?" Elaine asked.

"Oh, fine. Tired, you know?"

Elaine giggled. Randall recognised that sound straight away and inwardly, he smiled.

"That's the default setting these days," she said sagely. "Your knee's okay? Your hip?"

"The usual."

"Well, just remember we've got that appointment for your hip next Wednesday. Or was it Thursday?"

His body shrugged. Randall could almost feel the struggle to remember.

Elaine paused the programme on the TV and spoke into the remote. "Bring up the schedule for next week."

The image on the TV immediately changed into a well-organised calendar with several captions for some of the dates. Their lives were on screen. He could see reminders for appointments, payments, visitors, and items of food. Even some sort of safety warning for screen time and a meter underneath it that was highlighted green.

"Thursday," sighed Elaine. "It's a good thing I checked. I would've had you going in on the wrong day."

"Aye, just like last month."

Elaine let out a sound of amusement. "It was a good day nonetheless."

"It was. We should do that more often, just go wandering around the city."

She cancelled the schedule and the TV show returned but she didn't play it.

"We never had to rely on any of these things before," she said softly. "We got old, Randall."

"We did," his voice agreed.

There were a few beats of silence where Randall seemed to latch onto her words. That's why he found it difficult to look at her, he thought. They got old. He couldn't see himself, but he could feel himself. The tiredness and the aches that were like old friends settling in deep for the long winter. Seeing Elaine was seeing the end coming.

"And it happened so quickly," murmured Elaine.

"I seem to remember we've said that a few times over the years," said the other Randall.

Elaine smiled. "More than a few times."

She reached out and he did the same, their hands meeting above the small side-table in a clasp.

Everything went dark.

---xxx---

2019

Randall blinked in the warm light of his bedroom as he watched the fourth convergence point shrink.

"That is the end of your travelling," said the Entity.

Randall barely heard it. He was looking down at his hands, marvelling at the smoothness of his skin. He could still feel Elaine's hand holding on, along with the comfort it'd put into him right before he returned. He briefly remembered how different her hand felt, the roughness and the change in her fingers.

"Have you decided?"

Had he?

He looked at the Entity. It began to move slowly, its legs giving Randall an uncomfortable creeping in his spine. The Entity shifted so that it was now more of a semicircle with the open end facing the door. With the light coming through the window over its centipede form, Randall had expected to see its body turning light grey. Instead, its darkness seemed even more prominent, as if the more light there was, the more its body surged with black. Its tail end bent inward towards the middle of the room, near enough to Randall that he felt the need to step away slowly.

Had he decided? More than ever, he wondered if the priest had ever intended to help him; never mind whatever intentions or motivations the Entity held.

"I don't know if any of that helped," said Randall. "We seemed to be happy in the end. We were still together. We weathered bad times... And who knows what else?"

"Mortals strive for contentment. Is that not the end?"

Contentment. Randall thought it was a good word. He could think of nothing worse than to give into mediocrity. He had no idea, really, whether they'd been happy at the end, but they'd at least settled into an obvious comfort surrounding their situation. Their children were out there living in the world and bringing up their own little humans. Randall stopped that train of thought. Their children didn't exist yet; their lives were unlived.

He didn't owe them anything, he thought to himself. You couldn't owe people who didn't exist yet. Though, even that thought turned to ash because he could vividly see Ellie's face looking at him happily as she talked to him about her life on his forty-ninth birthday. He could see her disappointment in her mother. The face as she held onto her daughter in that picture. She was a fully realised human being who existed in limbo right now.

Contentment. It sounded like another word for acceptance. Emotions were like weather; they were fickle, and they came and went, and he knew ultimately that no one's life could be happy all the time. That was a delusional thing to expect. His own flash-forwards were proof of just how far beyond his own imaginings his life would turn out to be. More than that, they were proof of just how far beyond his own understanding he himself would change.

The thought of hurting Elaine was horrible, let alone the thought of her causing him pain. He could avoid some of that pain now, but he'd be avoiding the rest of what she brought to their lives, as well as the rest that he could bring to himself and Elaine.

"Have you decided?"

Randall looked at the Entity, but he did not answer.

It no longer mattered because the Entity suddenly vanished. Randall made a small sound of surprise at how quickly and soundlessly it had happened. The room looked innocuous, as if it had never hosted a demonic centipede thing.

There was a knock at the door. He looked at it.

It was time to decide.