It was Stella Starlight and Trent Phloog, and their three-and-a-half year old boy, Simon.
Simon squealed and went into a dead run when he saw me. “Aunt Clarissa! Aunt Clarissa!”
“You recognize me without my burgundy hair,” I said. “At least I have one fan in this dimension!” I crouched and grabbed him up. “Oof! You’re getting so big—I can hardly lift you anymore.”
“I like your hair short,” said Stella. “It looks more natural. I’ll bet it frees up a lot of time; I never could get over how much energy you put into all those chemicals and dyes.” This from the woman who spent hours in front of a mirror every morning with a curling iron so she could look like Ann Wilson of Heart on top of raising a baby and finishing college.
“Unfortunately, I’m not a natural blond,” I said, tousling Simon’s hair, “unlike the whole Starlight-Phloog brood.”
Stella seemed unusually friendly toward me in this reality, so unlike what I experienced in my own. Trent, however, seemed vaguely distant. I thought at first it was me, but then I noticed the way he was looking around the bookstore—like a stray dog who’d wandered into the wrong house and felt trapped. It was sometime before he even noticed me.
“How’s school going?” I asked, meaning both of them. But Trent just turned away. Stella, however, filled me in on her studies—I’d forgotten chemical engineering was her major in this reality, whereas it was theoretical quantum metaphysics in mine. Stella was always extremely bright and engaging, especially when she discussed her enthusiasms; but the minutiae and mechanics of mixing compounds breaking apart molecules was way over my head; I could barely follow her intricate terminology. My brain was about to turn off when Stella said something that perked up my ears.
“…hematology, so for my master’s thesis I’ve been working on synthesizing that strange enzyme we isolated in your blood sample.”
“You’re doing what?”
From behind me, I heard Preston suddenly cough. I don’t think I’d ever heard him cough or even clear his throat, although he was a constant smoker. For that matter, I didn’t know him to ever have a cold.
“You remember, that sample we took from you at the lab this past summer,” explained Stella. Of course, that would have been Clarissa Too, not me, but I didn’t correct her. “That was after you touched the Cosmic Cue-Ball in the back yard and became all muscly and able to fly and so on. Well, this semester we compared it to a sample in the Arbor State blood bank from when you gave blood in your junior year, when you were just my normal roommate, and we were able to isolate a mysterious enzyme present in the second sample but not the first. We think we might be able to synthesize …”
Preston coughed again. I turned and looked to see what was the matter, but he quickly averted his eyes.
“…government funding to test it on mice …” Stella continued.
“Wait, back up,” I said. “I missed part of that.”
But Preston kept hacking even louder.
“… the only question will be to find the right human test subject …” said Stella. She stopped and looked over at Preston, who was having coughing fits. “Preston dear, are you all right?” she said.
She went over to him and slapped him on the back.
“I think I might have swallowed a moth,” said Preston, grabbing his throat.
The left the floor to find Preston a drink of water, leaving me to wonder if I’d heard right: that Stella’s master’s project was to synthesize Mega-Soldier Syrup from Ms. Megaton’s hemoglobin or whatever. I wasn’t sure what I thought about having my Counterpart’s blood—since Clarissa Too was still virtually me—turned into prescription medication. I recalled how Ann Arbor was transformed in my reality when a home-brewed version of the booster shot was sold on the streets to pump up Arbor State athletes and non-athletes alike.
But this sounded like something much bigger—a full-blown federal project to create more Megaheroes like Clarissa Too—possibly a whole army of Megaton Men or Women—in a world that for now had only one. Whatever it was, Preston Percy didn’t want me knowing about it.
“So this is how it begins,” I said to myself. “One Megahero in a Civilian reality starting a whole chain reaction.”
I confess the implications of all this didn’t hit me at once; besides, it seemed like they were at the very early stages of research. But then I heard Simon giggling a few rows away, over in children’s books.
I walked over and watched as Simon pulled storybooks about dinosaurs off the shelf and showing them to his father, who was crouched on the carpeting and leafing through them with him.
I plopped myself down on the carpet next to them, and Trent and I took turns reading to Simon. Trent’s mood was considerably lighter, as if he’d found the one niche in the bookstore that didn’t intellectually intimidate him; he seemed to be having as much fun as his son identifying and pronouncing all the dinosaur names.
After a while, I said, “You know, Trent, I meant that question for both you and Stella—how are classes going for you? I hear you’ve been going to Huron River Community College.”
“Oh, I did all right last semester,” said Trent, suddenly somber again. “I only failed one class—the rest I got Cs. But keeping what’s left of the old Phloog farm running since Cousin Clyde died has taken up most of my time. So, I didn’t go back this fall.” I could see he was clearly disappointed in himself.
“That’s a shame,” I said. “You really seemed to be enjoying school.” I was referring, of course, to the Trent in my dimension, but he didn’t notice.
“Oh, school’s fine for brainy people like you, and Stella, and snobby Preston who works in a bookstore,” said Trent. “But some of us just aren’t cut out for it. This kid’s going to be a whizbang, however, that’s for sure,” he said, referring to Simon, who could already name all the dinosaurs by sight, even if he couldn’t read yet. “She bring him here all the time and makes me come when I’m in town. You know, she already enrolled him in an expensive progressive preschool this past September.”
“Pteradactyl, pteranodon,” said Simon, pointing to the various pictures in the book.
“He’ll learn to spell them before I do,” said Trent. He was joking, but I could tell this really saddened him.
“You shouldn’t give up on yourself,” I said. “There’s no law that says you can only be educated while you’re young. You can keep learning all your life, at your own pace. Just follow your curiosity.” I thought of the Trent in my reality, always with a used book on some esoteric subject in his hand, even if he didn’t quite grasp the subject matter. “Isn’t there anything in this whole college town that interests you? Anything in this bookstore?”
“I like westerns,” said Trent, smiling. “And I like reading about the Old West, non-fiction like. Only, they don’t write many westerns any more, and they hardly carry any at all in an highbrow bookstore like this; I have to go to another used book shop on the edge of downtown where they specialize in science fiction and detectives and comic books and stuff.”
“Maybe you should write western stories,” I said. “They need more westerns.”
“They don’t give out college degrees for writing westerns.”
“You don’t have to get a degree to prove you’re smart, or to use your mind,” I said. “You should just follow your curiosity. Who knows, maybe you’ll bring back the genre.”
“I tell Simon western stories at bedtime.” said Trent, consider what I said. “Stories that I make up. He seems to enjoy them. Only, he insists the cowboys ride dinosaurs, or he gets restless.”
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in the kiddie corner was becoming uncomfortable, so I stood up to stretch my legs. Preston had returned to the floor and was stocking books; I noticed him eying me suspiciously then looking away. He wasn’t about to let Stella out of his sight; she was leafing through the comparative religion section. I had a feeling if I pressed her to explain what she’d been telling me before she’d only change the subject.
I looked at my watch and realized my sister had probably circled past the State Street storefront of Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore about a dozen times while I had been chatting away; I’d probably have to go out to State Street to flag her down the next time she passed.
Then I heard a guitar strumming, and noticed I smelled coffee.
“Don’t tell me the store has a café with a requisite folk singer,” I said. “That’s such a bohemian cliché.”
“Yeah, it just opened it this past summer,” said Trent, who was still sitting on the floor. “If you like a fancy, overpriced cup of joe, this is the place. Stella loves coming here just for that alone.”
I wandered over because I thought the female vocalist sounded familiar. I had only heard my sister sing in church, but I knew she had a fairly good voice. Sure enough, it was Avie with a beat up acoustic guitar, sitting on a stool, singing into a microphone for a small audience seated at small round tables. In the background, a barista banged out coffee grounds from espresso machine’s portafilter.
Turns out Avie had driven around the block so many times that she noticed a sign in the window announcing that the evening’s folk singer had canceled. So, she found a parking spot, grabbed the acoustic she always kept in the trunk, took the sign down, and set up shop in the café. She introduced herself as “Melody Chrysanthemum,” a persona she’d made up on the spot, and began strumming and singing. Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore was so busy no one even noticed.
While Avie tore through a set of bluesy folk ballads—she just grabbed a book of “American Song” at random from out of the store’s music section—I bought a blank book and one of those long, souvenir Arbor State pencils in the gift section of the store, ordered a cappuccino, and sat in the café jotting down notes to clear my mind.
It was obvious I was going to be stuck in the Civilian Reality for the foreseeable future. I admit I was curious about Stella’s project to reverse-engineer the Mega-Soldier Syrup, but I would need to talk to her when Preston wasn’t around for that, and besides, it really wasn’t my concerned. The more pressing problem for me was who could I reach out to in the Civilian Reality that could help get me home?
I scribbled thoughts in my book for nearly an hour while Avie crooned. When I looked around the store, Trent, Stella, and Simon had split.
“Your sister’s got a nice voice, Clarissa,” said a girl’s voice from the next café table. It was familiar, but it wasn’t Stella’s. I turned to see Polly and Anton Parsec, sister-and-brother act from the Partyers from Mars. The diminutive pair, miniature adults with childlike proportions who looked like they stepped out of a Prince video, were nodding their heads to the music contentedly while enjoying cups of herbal tea and biscotti. “Not bad for a last-minute fill-in artist on a Monday night,” said Polly, her head bobbing to the tunes.
“Polly! Anton!” I said. “What are you doing here? Waiting for the Cosmic Cue-Ball to appear, I suppose.”
“I’m always waiting for the Cosmic Cue-Ball to appear, Ms. Megaton Man,” said Anton, sipping his Darjeeling. “Which means I’m usually disappointed.”
“But one must always remain ever vigilant,” said Polly. “That’s why we’re teetotaling tonight.”
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” I asked. “The tortoise and the Labrador and the skull guy and the squid girl?”
“We gave the other Partyers shore leave tonight, Ms. Megaton,” said Anton. “They’re no doubt finding trouble in the most debauched hideaways in Ann Arbor. But they won’t find as much mischief on a school night; it’s less dangerous than letting them out on a weekend.”
“I notice you just keep calling me Ms. Megaton Man,” I pointed out. “Whereas in this reality, Clarissa James is known as Ms. Megaton.”
“You don’t think a little thing like being in the wrong reality would confuse us, do you?” asked Anton. “I explained to you the last time: time, space, and reality have little meaning for us. We Partyers experience existence as an uninhibited synchronicity. Only less sophisticated beings such as you humans respect the illusory boundaries of the Multimensions.”
“We’re hung up and literal-minded, while you’re an advanced life form—I get it,” I said. “But maybe you can help this poor little fish out of water. You cross between dimensions at will, don’t you? … You could take me home!”
“And how exactly do you propose we do something like that?” asked Anton.
“You have your little flying saucer, the George Has a Gun,” I said. “It’s crossed half the galaxy at multiple warp speed …”
“A hundred thousand light years, give or take,” said Anton.
“Surely, you can transport me …”
Anton and Polly gave each other knowing looks then burst out laughing. “What do we look like, Yellow Cab?” asked Anton. “It doesn’t work like that. The George Has a Gun isn’t the Time Turntable or the Dimensional Doorway.”
“I’ve got to get back to my life,” I implored them. “I’m here by a complete and total accident …”
“Who isn’t?” asked Anton.
Polly saw my disappointment and explained, “You’re never where you’re not supposed to be, Clarissa. Everyone has a path in life, regardless of time and space—a destiny, if you will. If you happen to find yourself here—and you are most definitely, always, here—it has be for a reason. Find out what that reason is, and you will find contentment.”
“Thank you for that bit of Eastern mysticism on top of the Kantian philosophy; it’s a big help,” I said. “Do you have any more fortune-cookie quips like that?”
“You humans,” said Anton. “Always frustrated by reality because it never delivers what you expect. You confuse being alive with your ‘life,’ so called—life conceived as something that should be neat and tidy, but never is—composed like a perfect little story that’s supposed to unfold logically, but never does. Meanwhile, the universe repeatedly tries to teach you that existence is nothing more than a random set of experiences in which one happens to be at the center. But you never learn. Why don’t you just chill out and go with the flow?”
“That’s beautiful,” I said. “But I happen to have a lot invested in my life—school, relationships, all my stuff …”
“Gross materiality is always a bad investment,” said Polly.
I hadn’t noticed the music had stopped. I looked up to see Avie waving a fistful of cash in her hand, her guitar case in her other hand—“Melody Chrysanthemum” had done all right.
“This is just what the doctor ordered,” she said. “I was broke before this evening. White, privileged college kids are always the best tippers when the performer is African-American … guilt, I suppose. Who were you talking to, Clarissa?”
I turned to look over at Polly and Anton, but saw only an empty table next to me.
“Oh, nobody,” I said. “Just myself, I guess.” I closed my blank book and we headed out into the cold, dark night.
Next: Re-Election Day
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| Unpublished sketch I drew on a research trip to Yale, 2012. |
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