I brought mom home. Donning my exosuit again, I carried her into my room and lay her down on my bed in L2. I shifted her to R2 for a few seconds to reposition her. She looked so peaceful lying there and a part of me dreaded having to wake her up into the mess that was coming. It couldn’t be helped though. I wanted my mother back and dad needed his wife.
I hadn’t slept at all last night and between the early morning rescue, finding mom, and the four hours of driving, I was exhausted. After a brief shower and a change of clothes, I set my alarm to wake me up in four hours and passed out on the couch. It didn’t seem right to lay down on my soft bed in reality, while mom was relegated to a rock-hard bed in L2.
Feeling somewhat refreshed on waking, I made my way to the kitchen for a light breakfast, even though it was early afternoon already. Dad was just finishing his lunch as I walked in and he got up to give me hug. I swear I almost told him everything right then. I only managed to hold out because Uncle Magnum need to get here first.
“I didn’t expect to see much of you today. You mentioned that you had errands to run all day.”
“Yeah. I was able to get them all wrapped up early. What about you? Did you finish the turtle?” Dad’s latest piece was a Galapogos giant tortoise. I have no idea what put the idea in his head to make one out of metal, but it was incredible.
“Just about. It should be done by tonight or tomorrow morning. Would you like to come out and see it?”
“I would, but not yet. I need to have a talk with you and Paul.”
“It must be serious. It’s been a while since you’ve called him by his real name.”
“It is. I’m was just going to call him and see how fast he could come over.”
“Ok. I won’t pester you with all my questions. Just let me know when he’s here. I’ll be out back at the forge. I won’t start work on anything that I can’t put down at a moment’s notice.”
It being Saturday, Uncle Magnum had already finished his classes for the day and was preparing to run a few errands of his own. At my request, he dropped his plans and said he’d be right over. That gave me just enough time to have a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and for my nerves to get the better of me. How the hell was I going to break the news to them? I know they’ll be ecstatic about mom, but there were so much more that they’d need to understand for her return to make any sense.
Before I was ready, Uncle Magnum and dad were sitting at the kitchen table with me. I stalled a bit, putting my bowl and spoon in the dishwasher and returning the milk to the fridge.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I gathered you all here.”
Uncle Magnum let out a groan and dad gave a little head shake.
“I have something really important to tell you both. I was going to just blurt it out, only then you wouldn’t sit to hear the whole story and you really need to hear the whole story so that you can decide what to do. The problem is that the story is slightly outside the realm of what’s considered believable, so I’m back to not knowing where to start.”
“You’re babbling, Abby. Just start at the beginning.” Uncle Magnum seemed more amused than annoyed so far. I’d sidetracked his day and he was probably wondering if this was all some sort of a joke.
“First there was darkness and the Lord said, “Let there be light!” and there was light.”
“Smartass teenager! Not that far back. Start at the beginning of your story. The one you called us in here to tell us about.”
“Believe it or not, Paul, but my story actually does tie into that other story in a roundabout way.” I let out a breath and continued, “Almost two years ago, I was coming home from the Galt library and I didn’t get hit by a bus.”
“I remember that day.”, dad interjected. “You were practicing your Kung Fu with Ed when I got home and I asked you about your day. You told me that you didn’t get hit by a bus. You say many strange things Abby, but that one stuck me as unusually odd for you. You defined your day by what didn’t happen to you and you were specific about it. It wasn’t a general statement that you didn’t die.”
“I wasn’t trying to be odd. It was literally what happened to me on the way home. A bus swerved out of the way to avoid hitting a girl and barrelled right into my path. I froze up and I was sure that it was going to hit me. It should have hit me. Instead… it passed right through me.”
Dad’s eyebrows rose at this statement. Uncle Magnum looked confused. “You mean it passed right by you, no?”, he asked.
“No. Right before it could hit me, I saw the people on the bus grey out and disappear. The bus did the same thing as it passed right through me. A few second later, the bus was gone and all the buildings around me faded away. In the space of a few heart beats, I was left in a silent and empty landscape. A few moments later, I snapped back to the street and the bus was parked a few feet inside the real estate agency.”
Uncle Magnum looked at me skeptically. Dad just asked, “Why didn’t you tell us about this until now?”
“I thought you’d think I was crazy so I decided that before I told you, I’d see if I could do it again. On purpose. I wanted to get control of whatever it was that happened.
“And did you?”
“Yes. That’s what I was working on with Ed when you came home that day. When you called out my name, you threw off my rhythm and it happened again. Instead of Ed knocking into my arm, he passed right through me. I remembered the feeling and was able to replicate it. Over the past two years, I’ve learned a lot about my ability and how to use it.”
“What’s changed that made you decide to tell us about it after all this time?”
“I’m getting to that. I need to explain a bit more about my ability first or you won’t understand what happened. I won’t bore you with all the details of each discovery and all the practice time that I put in.”
“On the contrary, Abby. I would very much like to be bored with those details.” Dad’s eyes bored into me.
“Ok, but we don’t have time to get into that right now. Let me sum up what I’ve learned. My ability isn’t to go through things. It’s field control. I have a field that surrounds my body at all times and it let’s me shift between the layers and sublayers of reality.”
“Layers of reality? Sublayers? Abby, you’ve completely lost me.” Uncle Magnum was moving past amused skepticism and into annoyed skepticism.
“You could think of reality as being like onions. Onions have layers. Reality has layers. They both have layers.” This time, even dad got the reference to Shrek, as he’d watched it with us. They both rewarded it with a little laugh and some of the tension left Uncle Magnum’s shoulders. He still didn’t know where this was going, but he was more willing to listen now.
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“Seriously though, there are a few ways you can think about it. You once explained to me how computer games were made. About how they’d program in each part of the game on top of the initial game kernel. They started off with a world and defined the physical laws of that world. Then they added in continents and put oceans, mountain and lakes on them. With that layer done, they programmed in the cities and finally the npc’s. They build the world layer upon layer and once you add in the players, all those layers interact to form the game itself. Within each layer, nothing can happen. It’s only when they’re all together that you can get anything to happen. Reality was built the same way.”
“We don’t live in a video game, Abby.”
“No, but video games are based on reality. They’re the human attempt to replicate what God did when he created our world. It goes back to my joke earlier about starting from the beginning and the creation story in Genesis. First there was nothing and God said, “Let there be light” and there was light, which differentiated between the dark and the light. Then he went on for six days, creating each layer of the world. He made the heavenly bodies and the world itself. Next came the oceans and the land, followed by plants and animals and finally humans. He built up our reality in layers. My field allows me to travel back and forth between those layers. The first layer, I call it Layer 1 or L1, is the same as reality but without life. The second layer, L2, has no life and no motion. Anything that moves doesn’t exist. There are no cars or bikes or boats or things in general. You still have houses and buildings. Layer three had nothing in it. It’s just vast expanses of landscape. However, if a house had a basement, you will see the hole in the ground where the basement was dug out. That’s because interactions in reality affect each of the layers.”
“Can I extrapolate from this that layer four lack oceans and mountains and that layer five lacks the planet itself?” Trust dad to see the whole picture and not get bogged down in details like questioning my sanity.
“I don’t know. I’ve never gotten that far. Getting into each layer has been a process of discovery or accident. Or both. I’ve haven’t found the key to the next layer yet.”
“I’m not sure if you should. What would be the point?”
“I don’t know that either. I have noticed that over time, I find new uses for each of my abilities. Every scrap of new knowledge ends up helping in the end.”
“Abby. I really want to believe what you’re telling us and I can see that you believe it. Can you prove it though? Can you show us these layers?” Uncle Magnum’s question was quiet and sincere. He didn’t want his niece to be a crazy person.
“I can and will show you some magic tricks that will convince you, but you’ve already seen my field in action.”
“I have? When?”
Dad answered before I could. “The fire, Paul. Abby used her field when she ran into the house and saved Mark.” Now it was my turn to looked stunned.
“You knew?”
“No, Abby. I’m just putting two and two together now to get five. I should have asked more questions at the time, but I was too angry with you for putting your life at risk like that. After the anger faded, the relief of having you safe and sound overcame any desire to delve deeper into the issue. I work with fire everyday. The chances of you coming out of that house without being seriously injured are extremely unlikely.”
“I was already in another layer by the time I passed the entryway. I was never in any danger. The fire, smoke and heat didn’t exist in the layer. As long as I made it out of the house before it collapsed, then I was good. Even being in the house when it collapsed would only have meant a twelve-foot drop. Actually, at the time, I hadn’t made it into the layers yet. I was only in the sub-layers. The sub-layers are small pockets of the layers that exist while I’m still in reality.”
Uncle Magnum leaned forward, his crossed arms on the table, and insisted, “Maybe inferring your abilities is good enough for Josh. I’d like more. Can you show me something that will convince me?”
“Sure.” I though a moment and said, “Lean back please, both of you.” They did and I sent the kitchen table into R1. Dad’s eyes grew huge and Uncle Magnum actually jumped up and back from the table that wasn’t there anymore, sending his chair skittering back and almost knocking it over.
“Shit! I wasn’t expecting that.” Uncle Magnum kept looking at where that table had been. “Is it really gone or just invisible?”
“It’s still there. I just shifted it to R1. Since it’s not in our layer of reality anymore, you can walk through the space it no longer occupies.”
Taking a few tentative steps, he did just that. And bumped his head on the light fixture that was centered over the non-existent table. I couldn’t help laughing at that and he rubbed his head and scowled at me. I noticed dad trying to supress a smile and that set me off once again. Uncle Magnum backed away from the table area and I brought the table back.
“I don’t know if I can eat at this table ever again. It might disappear again, taking my food with it.”, Uncle Magnum joked. He rapped it with his hand, making loud knocking sound.
“I’ve learned a lot over the past two years. I can even create multiple fields that interact between the different layers. The field is also where I get my land sense from. It’s not a sense really. It’s the field feeding me information about whatever it passes through or encompasses.”
“That’s how you’re able to know what’s in the ground miles away. Can you really send out your field that far? This ties in to your recent development of an eidetic memory, doesn’t it?”
“Yes and Yes. It took a lot of practice to get strong enough to be able to hold the field that far away. I pretty much keep a set of fields on all day long, every day, to keep my skills up. Regarding the memory, I can remember everything that I scan. Perfectly. When I found out that metallic inks existed, I realized that I could read using the field. I’ve been having books printed in metallic ink for the last six or seven months and basically memorizing them and integrating their knowledge in hours.”
“The forms. You’ve been scanning me and Sifu Zhang to learn them.” Uncle Magnum said in a hushed voice.
“Yes. It’s also very useful in learning breathing techniques, muscle adjustments, and fighting.”
“This is quite amazing, Abby. I wish you’d have told us earlier. We could have helped you figure all this out. You didn’t have to do this on your own.”
“I know, dad. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to. It was very lonely doing it by myself. There was no one to share the triumphs with or to get new ideas from. I guess I got into the habit of keeping it a secret and couldn’t break it.”
“Why break it now?”
“I’m just getting to that. There are just two more things I need to explain about my abilities and the layers first. Last summer, when I finally figured out how to get into the layers, I discovered that anything you put into the layer is essentially in stasis. Its physical form cannot be altered in any way. You can still move it around and gravity will still work on it, but you won’t even be able to scratch it. If you were to go to the top of the Empire State Building in L1 or L2 and drop a bowling ball, that bowling ball would hit the ground and neither the ball nor the sidewalk would be damaged in any way. The ball would bounce around a lot, but it would remain intact. An object in stasis is in a pocket of frozen time.”
“The other thing I wanted to explain is that this ability isn’t something that simply appeared out of nowhere a few years ago. The field that surrounds me has always been there. It’s a part of me. Since the bus incident I’ve learned to see it and control it, but I’ve had an unknown and uncontrolled version of it all my life. It was the field that gave me the information about the impure metal ingots at the forge when I was six and all the other times since then.”
“Ok. Now you that you have the background story, I can move on to the main reason that we’re all here today.” I took a deep, calming breath and went on. “I was in Raleigh early this morning. The FBI and the police raided a business that was involved in human trafficking. They freed seventy-two people from the seventh floor of an office building. That office building was less than three miles from the intersection where mom was last seen.”
Both of them sat up straighter and gazed intently at me, hope flashing in their eyes. Hope that I hadn’t been there for years.
“I didn’t think that mom would be there and she wasn’t. It was only a transfer point, not a long-term slave camp. I thought I would finally find a clue to where she was taken though. Some record of her having passed through there. Only there wasn’t one. They had records going back twenty years with hundreds, maybe thousands, of kidnapped people and none of them was mom. I was so frustrated. There should have been something there and there was nothing. I’d finally gotten a solid lead on her and it all went up in smoke.”
Dad rested hand on my shoulder as my emotions overwhelmed me and tears ran down my face.
“I started walking away from the building, not realizing where I was going. I just needed to be moving and before I knew it, I was at the intersection where mom disappeared.. and there she was. Right there at the intersection. Waiting for me to finally find her.”
The two men who had raised me and loved me looked in wonder and confusion as I confirmed what I had just explained, “I found mom.”