“At least astral-projection across space is possible,” I said, as if I were informing Doctor Messiah. “But, am I really here?”
Doctor Messiah stood on the sidewalk next to me in his bare feet, arms folded, a faint smile on his lips. “Why don’t you find out?”
I noticed the lawn needed mowing; I stooped down and plucked a long blade of grass. I twirled the blade in my fingers. It felt real, but like the sandals I had put on back at the Institute, it quickly disappeared. When I looked at the lawn again, that particular blade was still there.
“I’m in some kind of nether world,” I said. “I must be a phantom of some sort.”
“Your ability to interact physically with the reality you see is somewhat … limited,” said the Doc.
I noticed fallen leaves all about.
“It’s not summer anymore,” I said. “It’s early autumn. We’ve traveled through time, too. But when …?”
I stood up and looked up and down Ann Street, where I had lived for three years. All the lawns needed raking and lawns mown and hedges trimmed, like it was late in the fall semester when outdoor work had ceased and everyone was busy studying indoors. Little things like the shrubs and trees in neighbors’ yards seemed familiar to me, but looked different somehow—smaller, shorter—as if they had had been reverted to some slightly earlier state. Older cars I hadn’t seen for a while were again parked in front of neighbors’ houses. On my own house where I used to live, I noticed the paint was peeling; it had reverted to the color it had been when I moved in, before Daddy had painted it the following summer.
“We’ve gone back in time a few years, haven’t we, Doc? Without the Time Turntable or the Dimensional Portal. That’s amazing!”
Doctor Messiah only gave a Mona Lisa smile.
Over his shoulder, looking west toward State Street, Pammy and Stella were approaching us on the sidewalk. Their hairstyles, their clothes, looked like something they would have worn a few years ago, around the time I’d first met them.
They stopped on the sidewalk in front of our house, before the paved path leading up to the porch. Neither of them noticed me or Doc standing on the sidewalk just a few feet away from them, plain as day. Pammy held a piece of paper; they were searching for an address. They doublechecked the street number on the house.
“This is it,” said Pammy, tucking the piece of paper away. She looked forlornly at the peeling paint, the screen door that was nearly off its hinges, the overgrown shrubs, the rain gutters that were pulling away from the roof. She already had a key in her hand, presumably from the rental agent. “Let’s take a look.”
Stella, like a lamb, only nodded.
“Stella’s definitely over made-up,” I remarked to Doc. “Something she dropped after she had her baby.”
Pammy marched up the paved path to the front porch, with Stella following behind obediently. Under her short jacket, Stella was clearly starting to show.
“We must be back in 1980,” I said. “Four years ago. Stella’s just learned she’s pregnant, and she and Pammy have realized they need to rent a place that’s bigger than the small apartment the journalism program provided on South University.” I looked at Doctor Messiah, who was watching the house. “I get it. This is like Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carrol, and you’re the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Not exactly,” said Doctor Messiah.
We watched the front of the house, saw them turning on lights and rolling up the window blinds on the second floor, opening and closing windows, checking the screens, and so on. Then they rolled down the blinds and turned off the lights. They came out the back door and opened the garage door.
“Did you notice how slender her butt was back then?” I asked Doc. “Stella used to be a good ten pounds lighter than she is now. Try as she might, she never managed to work it all off after she had Simon. Pammy, on the other hand, never gained a pound—she’s still a stick.”
They closed the garage door and went back into the house.
“Can we go inside, and listen to what they’re saying?” I asked.
But before Doctor Messiah could respond, Pammy and Stella they had emerged again from the front door.
“Not exactly a bargain,” said Pammy, locking the door. “But, with what the journalism department pays me and your parents’ contribution, we should be able to cover it. We could even invite a roommate or two to defray expenses. Do you happen to know anybody?”
The two stepped down from the porch and walked down the path. They stopped only a few feet from where we stood. They turned again to look at the house one last time.
Stella mentioned a few names of prospective roommates—some real slobs I remembered from South Quad. I wasn’t first on her list, or even anywhere on her list.
“Yoo-hoo,” I said, waving at them. “How about me? Remember me? You’re old pal, Clarissa—the girl who showed you the campus last September, Stella. Remember?”
I turned and looked at Doctor Messiah helplessly.
“They can’t hear me, can they?”
“There’s also this other girl,” said Stella, finally. “Clara or Clarice or something … I met her at the beginning of the semester, very friendly. I haven’t seen her around campus for a while, though. She’s black…but very nice. Quiet, studious—you know.”
Doc and I watched them walk back toward State Street.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “Black but very nice?!” I turned and glared at my escort. “Is that the kind of thing you’re meaning to show me, Doc? That all my white friends are really racists?”
I shook my fist in the air to show Pammy and Stella my class ring, although they were already a house length or more down the sidewalk.
“I don’t need you,” I yelled down the street after them. “See? I already graduated from this stinky school!” I gave them the finger while I was at it.
I was so livid I barely noticed the winds blowing colder and skies getting greyer.
“You’re going to see a lot of different sides of people, Clarissa,” said Doctor Messiah. “And learn a few unpleasant things about yourself, as well.”
I felt suddenly cold. I looked around; the trees were almost bare now. Snowflakes were starting to fall. I realized I was standing on the freezing pavement in my bare feet with only my shorts and a tank top. And of course, I never wear a bra, being my chest is so flat, so my nipples were sticking out a mile.
“It’s freezing, dammit,” I said, shivering. “You are the Ghost of Christmas Past, Doctor Messiah.”
I turned toward the house again and saw Pammy standing on the path—somehow, we’d jumped ahead a week or more in time. She was wearing a warm winter coat, the fur collar of which she had clasped around her neck with one hand. With the other, she smoked a cigarette. She was looking up at the house, then looking at her watch. Then, she dropped the cigarette on the pavement and stomped it out. She promptly pulled out another one, cupping her lighter against the stiff wind to light it.
“Phew,” I said, trying to both hold my nose and wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t miss living with a smoker.”
Presently, Stella came up the sidewalk from the direction of State Street, wearing the same short jacket, almost freezing to death herself. Another person followed along behind her, also wearing a light jacket, although at least she had the sense to have on an Abyssinian Wolves knit cap and scarf.
“That’s me!” I cried. “That is to say, another me … I’d know me anywhere.”
I would have been more shocked by this if I hadn’t already seen myself sitting on the Oriental carpet back at the institute. But this other me was shorter and skinnier than the phantom me I was later; obviously, it was me as I was a scrawny, introverted, studious sophomore.
“Oh, my God…did I really look like that? No wonder I had no sex life my first year and a half in college.”
I watched as Stella introduced my other self to Pammy for the first time. The three of them—Pammy, Stella, and the other Clarissa—looked up at the house and chatted about splitting the rent and whatnot, then presently walked up the path and entered the house.
“Clarissa Too,” I said to Doc, pointing to myself with pride. “As in Clarissa, Also. Although it sounds like Two, too.”
“I got that,” said Doc, still giving me that La Gioconda dirty look.
“Brr, I should have brought my winter coat,” I said, my teeth chattering. “I’d settle for that Arbor State Abyssinian Wolves knit cap and scarf right about now. I didn’t expect astral travel would involve hypothermia.”
“Simply tell yourself it’s not cold,” said Doc. “You’re not physically present, after all. In a moment, you won’t feel a thing.”
I did as I was told. I closed my eyes and reminded myself I was just visiting the past as an astral projection. Doc was right—slowly, my shivers went away. After a moment, I felt a comfy, cozy room temperature, like back at the Institute, although when I opened my eyes, the snow was becoming a blizzard.
“That’s much better,” I said. “Still, can we go inside? I’d like to listen in on myself—and overhear what my so-called friends are saying behind my back.”
“You can go anywhere you want, Clarissa,” said Doctor Messiah. “I’m really just following your whims.” He motioned toward the house. “Lead the way; I’ve never been here before, you know.”
We walked up the path and onto the porch. I opened the screen door, then opened the front door and walked in, although what we opened were really phantom double-images of said doors . Still, we had to walk through the closed, solid material to enter; it was weird. Anyway, we were now inside the foyer. Had I allowed myself to feel the temperature inside, it wouldn’t have felt much different on my astral body than the temperature outside.
“I’d forgotten how drafty this house was when I first moved in,” I remarked, “before Daddy came out from Detroit and weatherproofed it.”
The living room was empty, just the way it was on that evening when I first came to check out the house—the evening I was now reliving as a spectral observer. I looked ahead, down the hallway; there was no one in the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anyone on the first floor.
Above, I heard the creak of footsteps on wooden floorboards.
“They must be upstairs, showing me—the other me—the bedrooms and bath,” I said.
Momentarily, the three came back down the stairs. I didn’t think to get out of the way since Doc was motionless; consequently, Pammy and Stella just walked right through us. They walked down the hall and we followed them, gravitating toward the warmth of the kitchen. The stove was already on, the only reliable source of heat. Someone had already tacked up blankets over the thresholds connecting the kitchen to the hallway and dining room to keep in the warmth; once we were inside, Stella lowered the blanket, which had been tied to one side. The kitchen table was covered in both Pammy’s papers she was grading and Stella’s homework.
“Pammy teaches in the journalism department,” I said to Doc. “Stella is enrolled as an undergrad.”
Doc winked. “I got that much,” he said.
“Well, what do you think?” Pammy asked the other me.
“I love it,” my other self said. “It’s way better than South Quad.” I watched my other self, Clarissa Too, hand Pammy a piece of paper. “I brought references,” Clarissa Too said.
“Oh, that isn’t necessary,” said Pammy. She set them on top of her papers on the kitchen table.
I turned and remarked to Doc, “Dean’s list seven times.” “I wish you had applied yourself as rigorously to my art history course,” he replied. “Careful, you’re missing important details.”
I turned to watch the scene again.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” the other me announced. I watched my other self pull back the blanket, walk down the hallway, and duck into the powder room.
“What do you think?” asked Stella.
“A little high-strung,” said Pammy, “but conscientious. Studious, like you said. Friendly enough. She’s not going to be partying all the time, at least.”
I could hear my other self taking a pee in the powder room; not even the heavy blanket over the hallway threshold was sufficient to muffle it.
“Good grief,” I said. “I had no idea that little bathroom wasn’t more soundproof.” But Pammy and Stella weren’t paying attention.
The lights suddenly darkened in the house; daylight flickered through the windows, alternating with darkness.
“What’s going on?” I asked Doc.
“You’re the one in charge of this journey, not me,” he said. “Apparently, you’re being shown only key moments, according to your deepest psychic desires. Over the rest, we seem to be fast-forwarding, as you might say.”
Sure enough, right before my eyes, the scene had changed. Doc and I were standing in the same place in the kitchen, but now I heard the horn of a vehicle in the driveway.
“That’s my daddy’s pickup,” I said. “My adoptive father, Creighton Bellisle—not my natural father, Clyde Phloog. Cray and I are bringing some furniture from Detroit and my stuff from the South Quad dorm room over—I remember that day.”
We strode through the blanket and down the hall. Sure enough, it was Daddy and the other me bringing in a dining room table, a second-hand sofa, and other items through the front door. Stella and Pammy helped arrange the furniture as it was brought in; they were dressed in layers of sweatpants and sweaters, even though they never went outside the house. Daddy and the other me also hauled my mattress and chest of drawers upstairs to my bedroom.
Watching all of this was like watching a time-lapse film, sped up, fast-forwarded. It was almost a blur, until another important moment made it slow down to real time.
I watched Daddy as he tacked weather proofing with a staple gun over the big picture window in the living room, and using a heat gun to blow hot air on it and shrink it tight. Doc and I were standing in the dining room next to Pammy and Stella. Pammy made a remark about my daddy’s good-looking ass.
“That hussy!” I said. “He’s a married man; she knows that.” Although Daddy did have a nice little tushy.
The scene changed again.
Next, I saw my other self walking down the stairs in athletic shorts and a tank top, much like my phantom self. Stella and Pammy were also dressed like it was summer, too, in shorts and T-shirts, although it was still clearly winter outside.
“Daddy got the steam heat to work,” I explained to Doc. “I remember now. The landlord never came by to bleed the air out of the radiators; when Daddy did it, and got the heat cranking, it was suddenly like eighty-five degrees inside the Ann Street house for the rest of the winter.”
Daddy came in the front door in his work coat and scarf, having just fixed the hinges on the screen door. “What’s next?” he asked.
“The dryer in the basement,” said Pammy. “It doesn’t dry anything.”
“Probably just the pilot light,” said Daddy, confidently. He followed Pammy down the hall to the basement stairs. I could tell Daddy was taken with Pammy’s slender legs, because he couldn’t take his eyes off of them.
“That dog!” I said. “No wonder my adoptive father kept coming out to Ann Arbor every weekend to fix things. And here I thought he was concerned for my wellbeing.”
“Two things can be true at once,” said Doctor Messiah. “Anyway, I forgive him; Pamela Jointly does have very nice legs.”
The scene changed again and I saw Pammy working at a desk in the living room as my other self studied in the dining room on the big table with Stella. “Gosh, we’re really boring,” I said. “Just schoolwork and teaching…the good old days.”
I had to explain to Doc all about who Pammy and Stella were. “Pammy, you see, was a controversial columnist in New York for The Manhattan Project; she wrote about how megaheroes were a menace to society, and how they represented the worst aspects of American capitalism and aggressive military policy—particularly Megaton Man. And Stella Starlight, the former See-Thru Girl—and eye candy on the famous megahero team the Megatropolis Quartet—had had a torrid fling with Megaton Man, and gotten herself knocked up. Both had fled Megatropolis for their own reasons, and sought refuge in academia.” Doc nodded as I explained all this.
“That may be the narrative in your reality,” he said, portentously.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The scenes kept flickering by, like a dreamlike movie—or a dreamlike dream. I noticed the scene had changed again; now, Pammy and Stella were fixing some dinner in the kitchen, but I couldn’t see my other self anywhere.
“I wonder where I am,” I said to Doctor Messiah.
He shrugged. “Beats me. This is your movie-dream.”
“I’m going to go check upstairs,” I announced. I left him and darted up the stairs. In a few minutes, I came back down.
“What were you doing?” asked Doc.
“I just walked in on myself—my other self—masturbating,” I confessed. “Clarissa Too is such a pervert. It was kinda hot.”
“I forgive that, too,” said Doc.
I could hear my other self moaning from the foot of the stairs. “Good Lord! Do I have to make such a racket?”
I looked down the hall and saw Stella, who was very pregnant now, look up at the ceiling. “That girl needs a boyfriend,” she said. She turned on a radio that sat on top of the fridge to drown me out as they boiled macaroni.
“This is mortifying,” I said. “I had no idea how often they had to ignore my noisiness. I’m never living with a roommate again as long as I live—except my sister.”
Next thing I know, Doc and I were sitting on the front porch swing, which Daddy had also fixed. It was now early spring—still cold but the Michigan snow was beginning to melt.
“So far, it’s all been pretty much as I remembered it,” I said. “Is there any point to me seeing my early days living here on Ann Street again?”
“I’m not sure,” said Doc. “I’m here to guide you, only. As I said, you’re the one in charge of this trip.”
“You mean, like the Multimensions are using my inner psyche to determine what I see again?”
“In a sense, that’s always how it works when you travel through alternate realities or to different times.”
“But this isn’t an alternate reality,” I said. “It’s just my past. The only difference is I’m seeing things objectively. Everything else seems the same.”
“Is it?” asked Doctor Messiah.
“Of course,” I said. “Since I’m an astral body, I can’t do anything to interfere or change the course of time. That’s the appeal—my presence here is not creating an alternate reality, as it would have had I traveled here physically on the Time Turntable, or through the Dimensional Portal.”
“Yes, but are you sure everything is replaying exactly as it happened before?”
I thought about this for a moment. “Hmm. There’s one slight detail I thought was off. Remember when I handed my sheet of references to Pammy? I remember her handing the sheet back to me, and then I left it on top of her papers when she wasn’t looking, because I had put a lot of work into it I want ed to be sure she’d see it later. But this time, she put the references down on top of her papers herself, like she wanted to keep it. Did my astral presence somehow influence that?”
“Not very likely,” said Doc. “Does anything else seem amiss?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it. Stella used to wear a jacket with the letter ‘Q’ on it, a relic from her days as a member of the Megatropolis Quartet. She wore it the night she brought me here to look at the house. But her jacket didn’t have a letter ‘Q’ on it this time…did it?”
“I didn’t notice,” said Doctor Messiah. “But assuming you’re correct—and I’m sure you are—I wonder what would account for that.”
Presently, a green Volkswagen pulled up into the driveway. Out hopped Stella, even more pregnant than before, if that were possible, hopping mad. “Go to hell!” she shouted, slamming the passenger door behind her. She stormed into the house, right past us.
“Wait,” called Trent, who had parked the car and emerged from the driver’s side. “Stella, God damn it!” He darted up the porch steps and in through the front door, the screen door slamming behind him.
“That’s strange,” I said.
“What?” asked Doctor Messiah.
“I don’t remember Trent and Stella fighting, ever. And I never heard them swear at each other. They were never sufficiently passionate about each other to bother.”
“Never?” asked Doc. “What a shame. Perhaps they did when you weren’t around.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I wonder what’s going on.”
I got up from the swing and followed Trent into the house. Stella was crying in the living room.
“Stella, give me a chance,” he said. “It’s a lot to unload on a guy—that’s he’s going to be a father—especially when he doesn’t hear from some chick for eight months.”
“That’s not how it happened,” I said, mystified. I could feel Doctor Messiah watching over my shoulder.
“No?” asked Doc.
“No,” I explained. “Trent was Megaton Man and Stella was the See-Thru Girl when they hooked up back in Megatropolis one summer night in 1980. Stella realized she was pregnant only after she arrived in Ann Arbor…she didn’t tell Trent until spring break of 1981. That much is accurate …”
“But…?” asked Doctor Messiah.
“But, Stella went back to New York to tell Megaton Man the news,” I said. “Right after that was when he lost his megapowers—he was no longer the over-muscled Man of Molecules, just an ordinary civilian, like you see him now.”
“That much seems accurate, too,” said Doc.
“But the point is, Trent knew about the pending baby before he ever set foot in Michigan,” I said. “He already knew he was the father, long before he drove to Ann Arbor; that’s why he came to the Midwest.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Doc.
“Don’t you see, Doc? In this scene, Trent’s acting like he just found out; that can’t be right…”
Doc and I watched as Trent knelt in front of Stella, trying his best to console her.
“It was nice seein’ you last summer at the State Fair, Stella,” said Trent. “I always had a crush on you in high school, even though you were a couple years younger … I thought we had a real fun time, that night, under the moon and the stars out on the country road. I just never expect this would be the result.”
“I should have known,” said Stella, crying. “I should have known better than to hook up with some God forsaken farm boy on a hay bale…”
“Country road? Hay bale? What on Earth are they talking about?” I cried. “They never went to the same high school. Stella always told me that Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl did it on the roof of a skyscraper …”
“Look, Stella,” said Trent. “I don’t know nothin’ about your world. I’m not educated or nothin’. But I want to do the right thing. I want to be the kid’s father … I’ll even move from Farmington if you’d like…”
“Don’t do it for my sake,” said Stella, drying her tears. “I plan to raise this child myself, with or without any man. I’m not going to let this jeopardize my career in chemical engineering.”
“Stella, your major isn’t chemical engineering,” I shouted, although she couldn’t hear me. “It theoretical quantum metaphysics—or whatever—like your Old Man …”
“Well, suit yourself,” said Trent, rising to his feet. “At least you coulda given a fella some notice, is all. What possessed you to call me up to meet in a bar after all this time, anyway? It was in front of my friends and everything. Seeing you all ‘with child’ … I’d like to have shit myself.”
“Why don’t you leave?” said Stella, sniffling. “You’re smelling up my house.”
“She still loathes him,” I said to Doc. “A bit more overtly, maybe, but not substantially different.”
“I think I will,” Trent said to Stella. “Do me a favor … lose that phone number.”
He stalked out the front door and the screen door slammed again behind him. I could hear the VW start up and rumble out of the driveway. Stella ran upstairs and slammed the door to her bedroom. We could hear her muffled sobs from the foot of the stairs. “That’s not how it went down at all,” I said.
“No?” asked Doctor Messiah.
“Of course not,” I said. “Like I said, Trent drove from New York … he ran into Stella on the Diag, told her he had made up his mind he wanted to be the child’s father. She was cool to the idea, but she brought him back to meet all of us, and we let him crash on the sofa. It took some time, but they eventually warmed up to a platonic parental partnership.”
“Things seem to be proceeding a bit rockier in this reality,” said Doctor Messiah.
“What are you trying to pull here, anyway?” I demanded of Doc, angrily. “I just wanted to see what my life would be like if I were never Ms. Megaton Man. What you’re showing me is all fucked up.”
“Perhaps that’s the way things are,” said Doc, “in a world without Ms. Megaton Man.”
Next: The Parallax View
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Archival Images:
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| Clarissa trips with Doctor Messiah in Bizarre Heroes #3 (Fiasco Comics Inc., July 1994). |
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| Civilian Trent Phloog finds a pregnant Stella Starlight on the Diag in Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, July 1988). |
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