Fisher looks away from Edward’s eyes, confused, anxious, as he realises where he is.
“Simone!”
His soon-to-be ex-wife is sitting at a table, in a darkened room. The TV is on, the sound turned low on a seasonal cookery programme. A small angle-poise lamp glows next to her on the table, a glass of wine by its side. In the corner of the living room a Christmas tree’s red and green lights wink and its tinsel glitters.
“This isn’t 1981.”
“No,” says Edward. “This is tonight, three hours ago.”
Simone is wrapping presents.
Taking sips from her drink, she wipes her nose and sweeps her long unruly hair back, but it keeps falling over her face. In the dim light, she looks even thinner than Fisher remembers. She bites a piece of sellotape from its roll, almost snarling it off, and sticks the edges of the wrapping paper down, then writes a name on a shop-bought sticker. There are now four small presents on the table, each one wrapped in Christmas paper. A bottle of after-shave will make a fifth. It’s probably for her dad. She is used to crying because it has become a chronic condition. She can perform complex tasks even as the tears trickle down. Crying hardly gets in the way of anything anymore, although mixed with anger the cocktail can still overpower. Unnerved, Fisher starts pacing the room.
“She can’t see or hear me, is that right?”
“Correct.”
Edward observes, a dark suit hidden in shadow, the supreme persuader at work. Fisher looks around at the room he used to sit in, less and less often as the time went on and then not at all as their communal sourness drove him out. He sighs, annoyed.
“What are we doing here? Why is she crying?”
Edward gives a soft laugh.
“Really, Dr Fisher, an intelligent man like you.”
“It is her who’s divorcing me. You probably know that.”
“Of course. I also know that your ex-wife is aware how important your work is to you, even now. That was never the issue. How important your family was to you—that was the question she asked—not directly, but in her own way. You did not answer that question because you understood nothing. But conscious choices often produce uncontrollable and unpleasant consequences.” The smile in his eyes sharpens. “I think you’re beginning to understand.”
The room door opens. A small figure stands on the threshold, rubbing its eyes.
“Mum, I can’t sleep. Is daddy here?”
Fisher reaches out to the boy, steps towards him.
“Sam!”
The boy shuffles into the room. Half asleep, wearing Spider-Man pyjamas. His mother quickly hides the Christmas presents under a newspaper, goes over to pick him up, wiping her eyes and scooping Sam into her arms.
“You’ve had a bad dream. It’s not real. It’s OK baby.” She carries him out of the room and back to bed, leaving Fisher, as was so often the case, standing mute and seething in his own living room. But this time there is sadness, greater even than the one he felt on the dead earth.
“Here is the earth-shattering event you wanted, Dr Fisher. Her world has been broken apart, and that of your son. Sam doesn’t sleep very well now; he’s getting into trouble at school and your ex-wife is exhausted. I’m afraid you are responsible for this. It was your choice. She still loves you, but her heart is hardening, and soon it will be too late. In three weeks time your divorce will become absolute. Seventy-eight days from then your ex-wife meets someone else, through a work colleague—a tentative first date follows. It leads to a second date, and to a relationship.” Edward waits.
“Selfishness is the bloom that chokes the garden. This other man has the capacity to put other people before himself.”
Simone comes back in and takes a gulp of wine from her glass. She places the wrapped presents in a carrier bag, sniffing mechanically while wiping her eyes. Then she raises her head, seems to look directly at Fisher, as if she can see him. She looks into his eyes. Face to face.
“I did love her,” says Fisher, tears in his eyes. “I do. I….don’t know...don’t...what to say.”
As he reaches out, stricken, his ex-wife’s face merges with the on-screen collision signature in the lab. He touches the monitor, a tear rolling down his cheeks. Edward is standing next to him. He speaks quietly.
“Existence is a web of complexity. Move too suddenly, too aggressively, and all you’ll do is break threads. In higher dimensions there are other worlds, other realities. Other colours. Can you imagine a new colour? An entirely different colour to any you have ever seen?”
Fisher frowns. In a daze, he shakes his head, his fingers touching his screen wife, the wreckage of a violent event. There is no colour or shading in his life. All complexity had been reduced to black and white and his only focus was on destruction, on breaking down reality into perishable units of one that can never be truly isolated, for nothing exists alone. Atoms must always combine.
The illusion of being in control vanished. He was a child who dreamed he was a man. The course that could not be deflected or endangered was a dead end. There was no choice but to accept that, and turn around, to whatever wrecked paradise he’d abandoned.
Edward puts a hand gently on his shoulder.
“When you are ready—if that is ever the case—your species will be shown how to operate across the dimensional planes, but you will not be allowed to force your way in like children. There are always rules, and there are those who enforce them, usually to the benefit of those trying to break them.”
He stops. He regards, for a moment.
“But you want to know. You are curious. And you want to leave your mark.”
Fisher cannot hear the world exhaling, breathing again.
Sitting straight-backed at the terminal Edward types for 10 seconds, impossibly fast on the keyboard, his fingers a blur, streams of symbols and equations spreading across and down the screen. He stops typing when two-and-a-half pages have been filled.
The cursor blinks.
“Look elsewhere,” he says. “It will be more productive, for yourself and for humanity, and safer.”
Edward stands, straightens his perfect white cuffs, quiet and composed. He smiles, nods once, and disappears.
For a while Fisher can hardly move. He stares into space. Gradually, he refocuses, checks his watch, as if waking from a dream. The time is 11.21pm. The second hand ticks.
A sound at the window. A fluttering of wings. The owl he saw flying over the car-park has perched on the outside ledge, its huge dark eyes watching, blinking.
