Worlds Apart

I took a deep breath as my gaze moved across the rows of sophisticated equipment. The room was a bit stuffy from the heat being generated by all of it running at the same time. We had adjusted the air conditioning down twice already, but there was only so much it could do to make headway against the massive amount of power that was being consumed here today.

"We are almost ready for you, Rod."

Brad Jordan, one of my fellow researchers, stood behind me checking off items on a clipboard. Today was the big day. The first attempt to see if the last ten years of blood, sweat, and tears had been worth it. A hand clasped my shoulder, and I turned around to stare into the bearded face of Sam Dayne, my partner in crime in this endeavor.

"Remember, this first time is just a fast in and out test of the process. I preset your module to return you to the platform after three-minutes no matter what, o.k.?"

"Don't worry, Sam. We have been over this a thousand times."

The tone I was going for was one of reassurance, but I heard the shaking in my voice, and I knew Sam couldn't miss it. He smiled sympathetically, rubbing my shoulder before he moved off to double check the settings on the primary controls. I tried to slow my breathing and focus on the task ahead it wasn't every day that a man takes a leap into a different reality, so I needed to stay calm.

A low hum began to fill the room. The quantum intermix chamber started to glow with steady white light. The time was almost here one giant step forward for humanity, or at least we hope that would be the case.

"You don't have to do this you know. Why not send one of your assistants? Does it make sense for the head scientist to go?"

This was a voice I was very familiar with since I had been married to its owner for the last twelve years. My wife, Jocelyn, had come to stand at my shoulder while the humming grew louder in front of us.

"I can't ask anyone else to shoulder this risk. It's mine, and Sam's design, as well as our theory that is being tested. It's only right it be one of us that goes, and I drew the long straw."

Jocelyn came around to stand in front of me. Her short brunette hair fell around her small, round face framing it perfectly. She smiled at me making her gorgeous green eyes crinkle up at the corners, and her soft pink lips spread back from her white teeth.

"O.K., Mr. Brave Scientist, you just make sure you come back to me in one piece."

"I've go it covered," I replied with more confidence than I felt.

"Power lever at 80%. You had best take your position, Dr. Hewitt."

My lips brushed briefly across Jocelyn's before I took four short strides that brought me to the edge of the platform. Jocelyn followed in my wake staying just outside the safety circle marked in red two meters away.

"We have 100% power. Quantum flux initiated," called out Sam from behind the primary control panel.

A soft tingle broke out all over my body like a thousand invisible fingers were tickling me. My vision started to dim as if the light in the room was fading away. I began to mouth a last, "I love you," to my wife, but before I could complete the words the bottom dropped out of my world.

I staggered backward feeling dizzy, and robbed of my balance. It took a moment to realize that I was no longer in my lab but standing on a grass-covered hill. The sun was bright beating down on me. I could hear voices, and as my vision cleared, it became apparent I was in a city park. There were people all around me occupied in different mundane activities. I saw folks walking their dogs, and a couple of teenage boys throwing a football back and forth not far from where I stood. The trip had been more disorienting than I had expected since it was apparent I hadn't landed in the lab but at a different point.

"Holy shit! We did it," I mumbled to myself.

At least it appeared that we had, I would need to find some proof first that I wasn't in the world I had known. My feet were a bit unsteady, but I walked quickly down the hill conscious of the fact that my three minutes would soon be up. In front of me was a vendor selling hot dogs, and newspapers. It seemed like the best place to verify that our theory was correct.

My hands shook as I lifted a newspaper from the small wire rack. I didn't have to look far to find the proof I was looking for it was right in that day's headline.

"President Eastwood calls for new Middle East peace initiative," I read the headline out loud to myself.

"President Clint Eastwood? Fuck me. We did do it!"

I looked around me in awe. Sam and I had advanced the theory of travel between parallel realities using quantum fluctuation, and entanglement as a bridge for years, but I had never hoped to see it a reality in my lifetime. Thanks to the generous endowment from my wife's family we had made it far sooner than we had anticipated. I was standing in a world that was very similar to my own, but for a few differences perhaps close to identical. There could be a million more variations out there, and now the way was open for us to explore them all. The excitement was hard to contain, but then a soft buzzing on my hip told me that my time here was almost up.

It was harder to get back up the hill than it had been to go down, but I wanted to be as close to my original entry point as possible. Glancing around one last time, I smiled at the thought of what my colleagues would say when I returned. The buzzing on my hip abruptly stopped, and my module beeped five times slowly counting down. I closed my eyes and steadied myself for the transition.

The beeping stopped, and then nothing...

Opening my eyes, I removed the module from my belt glancing at the small liquid crystal display on the side. The words that flashed there sent a chill up my spine.

-Signal Lost-

"Oh shit...This can't be good," I thought.

The next several hours were some of the longest of my life. I sat on a park bench with the quantum flux module in my hand trying to ascertain what was going wrong, but given the limited tools I had at hand, there wasn't a whole lot that I could accomplish. Everything seemed to be in working order, but for some reason, I had lost connection with the quantum field in my own reality. It was like the anchor that tied me back to my world, and without it, there was no way for me to find my way home.

I knew I couldn't let the fear take hold of me or I was as good as lost. The logical thing to do was seek out the help of someone who would have the right tools for me to investigate this problem further, and there was only one person I could think of that could provide me with that assistance.

Thankfully, this place ran on the same system of currency as my own, so it was no problem for me to find a bus to take me back to my lab. The building looked on the outside the same as it did in my world, and if I needed any further proof that this world was a parallel to my own I got it when the security door to the central lab opened when I used my palm print.

The lab was mostly quiet, and I was grateful for that since I wanted to keep my interactions with people to a minimum. I had no idea if the person I was in this reality was close to my own personality or different from me. There was one person I had to speak to though if I was going to get the help I needed, and I stopped in front of Sam Dayne's office door a moment later and knocked softly.

"Come in!"

The door swung back noiselessly on its well-oiled hinges, and I quickly took stock of the room beyond. At least on the surface, it appeared the same as the one I had sat in countless times in the past ten years which was to say a real mess. Sam was a brilliant scientist, but was completely indifferent about keeping his office organized. He was sitting behind his desk studying me with a perplexed expression as I closed the door behind me.

"Rod! What the heck are you doing here? I thought you flew out this morning to go to Washington, and meet with those guys from Anotech about getting some help building a secondary coil."

"Right...Um...You see Sam here is the thing. I'm not the Rod Hewitt you know."

"O.K...So what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means the experiment worked! Well, it almost worked I got to your reality, but I got stuck."

"Is this a joke? Did those assholes in biochem put you up to this? Boy! You take a few test tubes without asking, and suddenly you're a marked man."

"This isn't a joke, Sam. I'm not the Rod Hewitt of this reality I traveled here from a parallel world, and I need your help to get back."

To emphasize my point, I laid the malfunctioning quantum module on the desk between us.

Sam studied it for a long moment then looked back up at me, and started to laugh, "All right a jokes a joke, but you shouldn't be taking experimental equipment out of the containment area."

"I'm serious Sam, please, I need your help!"

"Hilarious, Rod. You know as well as I that the last experiment was a failure, and we are still trying to determine the cause."

He looked at me up and down, incredulous before he stood, and walked over to a shelf on the wall taking a large silver box with a handle attached into his hand.

"O.K. I'll call your bluff. If you traveled through a quantum flux tunnel, you would be bleeding neutrino's all over the place nobody can fake that so...HOLY SHIT!"

The minute he activated the detector in his hand it started to glow bright red and the needle on it pegged the top of the scale. He slowly tore his eyes from the readout to look at me in a new light.

"So...Sam...Will you help me or not?"

A TEAM THING -

We spent the next two hours pouring over the module, but to my disappointment, even after completely dissembling it we could find nothing wrong. I threw down the tool I was holding in disgust.

"I don't get it if everything is working like it was supposed too how am I still here?"

Look, Rod don't panic just yet. Let's take a step back. Tell me everything that happened just before, and after you jumped."

"There isn't that much to it. You powered up the coils. I mean my Sam powered up the coils, and then I kissed my wife and got on the platform, and here I am!"

Sam rubbed his beard in thought, "Wait a minute. You kissed your wife right before you got on the platform?"

"Yes...So?"

"Then how close was she to you when the quantum flux was activated?"

"As I remember she was just outside the red line maybe two meters from where I was standing."

"Oh Wow! I think that might be it."

"What are you talking about? What might be it?"

"Remember the basis for our theory that each parallel reality would have a unique quantum field based on how quantum energy was entangled in that reality. This would give us a unique signature to search for when returning from one reality to another after the quantum flux formed a tunnel between the two."

"Yeah, so what does that have to do with my wife?"

"It stands to reason that your quantum field would be entangled with that of someone you spent a lot of time around like your wife. I think that her proximity to you gave your field a boost that allowed you to pass through the tunnel, but once you were on this side, you didn't have a strong enough quantum field to link back to your reality."

"So, you're saying that all I need to do is get my wife from this reality to come to stand close to me when we fire up the coils, and the entanglement of our quantum fields should give me the boost I need to get back to my reality."

"Well, it's a solid theory, but the only way to know for sure is to try it out," said Sam.

"O.K. well it shouldn't be too hard. My wife in this reality won't know the difference between me, and...Um...the other me. So, I go asked her to come to the lab, and we run the experiment."

"Sure. I can give you a lift over to pick up Melissa, and then we can give this a shot!" replied Sam.

"Wait! Whose Melissa?"

"Your wife Melissa, you know the woman you've been married to for the last twelve years."

"I have no idea who you are talking about."

Sam's face clouded over when he stood up, and waved at me to follow him. He led me to another office down the corridor from his using a master key to open the door. I recognized the furnishings as soon as he swung the door back. My office was in a different place in my reality, but it looked the same. Well, almost identical. Where there had been a framed picture of Jocelyn, and I with our daughters on the desk there was a similar picture, but the photo was very different. I picked it up staring at the incredible image in front of me.

"See, you and your wife, Melissa."

"I'm not married to Melissa. In my reality, I'm married to Jocelyn."

"Whose Jocelyn?"

I took a deep breath still not believing what I was looking at, "Melissa's baby sister. In my world, I'm married to Melissa's younger sister."

I nearly dropped the photo trying to set it back on the desk. In the picture, the man who looked exactly like me was standing in a field with a forest in the background with his arms around a tall woman with ash blond hair, and a very serious look on her face. I knew her as Melissa Fairchild, my sister-in-law for the past twelve years, except in this world she apparently was my wife.

"Wait a minute I've never heard you mention anyone named Jocelyn. I've known you for ten years, and been to your house plenty of times no one has ever talked about Melissa ever having a sister."

"I don't know maybe in this world she died at a young age, or was never even born at all. If she doesn't exist, I guess I am fucked."

"Hang on! Let's not give up just yet. I have a friend that works as a private investigator let me call him, and have him do some digging. We at least can find out where we stand, and then go from there."

Sam took me by the arm, and we walked together back to his office where he made a phone call and asked his friend to gather any information he could on Jocelyn Fairchild. He then offered to take me back to his place so that I could rest a bit.

"This will probably take a few hours to get at least a preliminary run down so at least at my place you can eat, and take a load off."

The suggestion was as good as any, so we took Sam's car, and he drove me to his apartment. He was kind enough to pick up some burgers on the way. I was more hungry than I realized, and tore into my hamburger like it was going to be my last meal on this Earth. Afterward, Sam insisted that I lay down for a while on his couch. The cool leather was soothing on my skin, and to my surprise, I dropped right into a deep sleep. My dreams were odd, and disjointed with nothing I could focus on, but they left me with a feeling of loss when Sam shook me awake. It turned out to be almost four hours later.

"I let you sleep a bit longer because I thought you needed to have a clear head to deal with what I am going to tell you next," he said.

I noticed under his arm he had a thin manila folder. Sam saw me glancing at it, and he took it over to the dining room table, and after taking a seat himself flipped it open.

"My investigator friend dropped this off an hour ago. It was all the information he could gather on short notice, but I think it is more than enough to give us a direction to follow."

"Tell me if she is dead or that she never existed, Sam. I can take it."

"Well, the good news is there is a Jocelyn Fairchild, and she is the sister of Melissa Fairchild. I'm afraid it gets a bit more complicated after that part."

"Complicated how?"

"There are some things down here that you are not going to like very much so just bear with me o.k.?"

I nodded, and he continued clearing his throat, and looking more than a little uncomfortable.

"It seems that you and Jocelyn Fairchild did have a relationship back in college. You were engaged to be married after graduation, but you had a serious falling out, and the engagement got called off."

"That's not what happened, Jocelyn, and I were college sweethearts, and we married the summer after we graduated."

"In your world that was the story, but not here I'm afraid. According to what my friend dug up Jocelyn got pregnant her senior year with the baby of a guy named George Mast a classmate of hers. The circumstances of why they were together aren't clear, but she terminated the pregnancy. It looks like her family was afraid of the potential scandal, and given their standing in high society around these parts decided to sweep it under the rug. She was expelled from the family, cut off from her inheritance, and sent packing."

"Sweet, Jesus," I mumbled.

"Yeah, well it gets worse. You called off the engagement when you found out about her and George. It looks like Melissa was there to help you pick up the pieces, and you two became an item marrying years later. The thing is Jocelyn ended up having a rough time without her parent's money, and an incomplete education. She...um...there is no easy way to put this, so I am just going to plunge right on in. Jocelyn started working at a club called the Red Fox, and has been there for quite a few years.

"What the heck is the Red Fox?"

"It's a strip club."

"Wait! What! You're saying my wife is a stripper?"

"Technically, your sister-in-law is a stripper. You're married to Melissa, remember?"

"Oh my God!"

I couldn't stand still, and started to pace the floor in rapid steps back and forth between the living room, and the kitchen of the small apartment.

"I know this is a lot to take in, but there is some good news."

"I'm listening."

"Hey! At least Jocelyn is alive, so that's one thing."

"Yes, and I'm sure she is going to be thrilled to help the man that abandoned her years ago to a life of stripping while he married her sister."

"She might be happier to see you than you might think."

"What are you talking about now?"

"My P.I. friend did some more digging, and he found out that you...or rather the Rod I know, has a gold card membership at the Red Fox. The club is extremely exclusive, its no regular strip place the girls are high end, and you have to have a pass card to get into it. He also discovered that the apartment that Jocelyn is living in is being paid for on a credit card belonging to one Rod Hewitt."

"You are saying that I am having an affair behind Melissa's back with her sister who is a high-end stripper!"

"That is about the size of it. The bright side of all this is that Jocelyn might be more than willing to help you. All we have to do is get into the Red Fox, and meet up with her then get her to come back to the lab."

"Why not just wait until she gets off work, and meet her outside the club?"

"Yeah, that's the other piece of bad news. I've been doing some calculations based on the neutrino decay from the readings I took off you earlier, and our original calculations for the quantum flux tunnel. I'm pretty sure that the tunnel is going to degrade and collapse within about six hours, so if we don't get you back through before then you won't be going home anytime soon."

"Shit! I get it. Since we have no way of knowing the quantum signature of my world without the tunnel, we would be shooting blind hoping to find it again."

"So how do I get into the Red Fox? You said I need a special card right?"

"That's right, and I know where Rod keeps his in his home office. I mean I didn't know what it was it's just a plain card with no markings, and a chip in it, but my P.I. friend showed me a photo of one, and I've seen a card like that in the middle drawer of Rod's desk."

"Then I need to get into my house, or rather the house of the me here. Boy, this is confusing, anyway, I need to get into the house, and retrieve the key card so I can go hook up with my stripper wife."

"Sister-in-law."

"Whatever. We're running out of time lets go."