Recursion(79)
“It feels like I was in our home in Tucson literally seconds ago.”
“Sorry to say you just shifted from one shitty April 16, 2019, to another.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We failed again.”
Their first meeting at the Portland bar. For a second time. The claims of clairvoyance. He fell in love with her even faster, because she seemed to know him better than he knew himself.
The memory rush is more intense this time.
Almost painful.
He collapses in the snow as the past twenty-nine years with Helena hit his brain like a train of memories.
They spent the decade before technology was sufficient to build the chair studying space-time, the nature of matter, dimensionality, and quantum entanglement. They learned everything they could about the physics of time, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Then they explored methods of traveling back into memory without using the tank, searching for a faster way. But absent the sensory deprivation, all they accomplished was killing themselves again and again.
Next come the memories that break him.
Losing his mother again.
Fights with Helena over not having kids (that must have been infuriating for her the second time around).
The sex, the love, the beautiful love.
Moments of exhilaration from knowing they were the only two people in the world fighting to save it.
Moments of horror from the same realization, and the knowledge they were failing.
And then he’s fully merged. The Barry with memories of all timelines.
He looks at Helena. She sits beside him in the snow, staring a vertical mile down toward the city with the same thousand-yard stare she’s had for the last year, knowing this day was coming unless a miracle occurred.
Holding this new timeline up against the last, the change in Helena is disconcerting, this version of her a slight degradation from the previous iteration, most evident in the quieter moments.
Less patience.
More distance.
More anger.
More depression.
Harder.
What must that have been like for her, reliving a relationship from the beginning, with all the knowledge of its weaknesses and strengths, before it even started? How was she even able to connect with him? With his na?veté? It must have been like speaking to a child sometimes, because, though he’s technically still the same person, the perspective gap between who Barry was five minutes ago and who he is now with all of his memories is a yawning chasm. Only now is he truly himself.
He says, “I’m sorry, H.”
“For what?”
“It must have been maddening, living our relationship again.”
She almost smiles. “I did want to murder you on a semi-regular basis.”
“Were you bored?”
“Never.”
The air is heavy with the question.
“You don’t have to do it again,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“With me.”
She looks at him, hurt. “Are you saying you don’t want to?”
“That is not what I’m saying. Not at all.”
“It’s OK if you are.”
“I’m not.”
“Do you want to be with me again?” she asks.
“I love you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I want to spend every life with you. I told you this last week,” he says.
“It’s different now that you have full memories of every timeline. Isn’t it?”
“I’m with you, Helena. We only scratched the surface on the physics of time. There’s so much more for us to learn.”
He feels his phone vibrate in the pocket of his parka. This last hike together to their favorite spot was worth it, but they should leave now. Return to civilization. Watch the world remember and then get the fuck out before the soldiers come for them, even though he’s doubtful he and Helena would be found so soon. They lived under new identities this time around.
Helena takes out her phone and unlocks the home screen.
She says, “Oh God.”
Struggling onto her feet, she takes off running in her snowshoes, moving awkwardly back down the trail.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“We have to go!”
“What’s wrong?” he shouts after her.
She shouts back, “I will leave you!”
He clambers up and takes off after her.
It’s a quarter mile downhill through the fir trees. His phone keeps buzzing—someone lighting him up with texts—and despite the massive footwear, he reaches the trailhead in less than five minutes, crashing into the hood of their Jeep, breathless and sweating through his winter gear.
Helena is already climbing in behind the wheel, and he scrambles into the passenger seat, still wearing the snowshoes as she cranks the engine and tears out of the otherwise empty parking lot, the tires spinning on the icy pavement.
“What the hell, Helena?”
“Look at your phone.”
He digs it out of his jacket.
Reads the first lines of an emergency text on the home screen:
Emergency Alert
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO MULTIPLE US TARGETS. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.