"She walked through her home one last time, picking up random items and remembering..."
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She walked through her home one last time, picking up random items and remembering …
ReplyDeleteThen she walked through it another time , also for the last time, and then again, and again, each time the last time, each time the items re-randomized for her to pick up, each time in a different universe, ad infinitum.
Being a time traveller actually sucked, she thought, for the umpteenth time. She could never keep straight which of the possibilities were extant, and which were filed away, buried under probabilistic clutter.
She was getting tired, but she knew that in one of the other universes she was not, or she was not here at all, having decided to do something else. Or she had succumbed to exhaustion or some other malady and was now lying on the floor, bleeding from her ears. Or had fallen through the floor, all of her constituent molecules just missing those of the wooden planks and beams, and air, and dust motes, landing on her feet on the cool musty slab of the basement floor, knees bent slightly to cushion the force of her landing.
This was impossible, of course. No, not impossible, she reminded herself. Unlikely, yes; improbable, sure; unexpected, certainly. Strange; out of the ordinary, improbable. But none of these phenomena were impossible. They were just non-zero.
She walked through her home one last time, picking up random items and remembering...
ReplyDelete...other people's worst nighmares.
Where the hell did these things come from? Who put them here? She had been very careful. No one knew she lived here but her police contacts.
Her head hurt. Every time she raised a hand to touch it, she felt a shift--like she was supposed to be doing something else. Something was on her head. She felt a tricke of blood down her cheek. When did...
Toys children clutched as they were murdered were scattered all over her floor. She could feel them, pulsing like infected wounds. She panicked, feeling the danger, and immediately went to the knife block in the kitchen--but her knives had been replaced with the still-bloody implements used by several serial killers. She staggered, the pain of visions of depravity shooting through her head. The door, the door...she had to get out.
Half-blinded by visions, she didn't realize the door had been replaced. Such an innocuous thing, a door. None of the previous victims suspected it led to the torture and confession chambers of that hideous regime, the last room any of them would enter. She grasped the doorknob and screamed and screamed and screamed...
Something cracked in her head. Her vision blurred. She shook her head. What had she been doing? She had forgotten. Wait! What are these things, on the floor? But I have to get out of here! But why? Never mind, I have to leave! She walked through her home one last time, picking up random items and remembering...
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"How did you find her?" The camera focused on her agonized face as the helm sent an electrical charge through her head, shocking her and causing her to forget again.
"Cops aren't paid that well."
"But that ability? There's nothing like it. I've never heard of anything like it. Isn't there some way we can use it?"
"I'm sure I'll think of something eventually. But for right now, we need her out of the way. Doing this will make her more pliable. Give it a year or two, and she'll be begging to touch anything that doesn't set off an episode."
"What if she gets outside?"
"She won't. Even if she does, she'll just find out exactly how horrible a place Auschwitz was."