/ Epilogue: Parallel in Two, Pt. 1 /

Hello? Where am I? What is this?

Arufa couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear her cries, or feel her body, or even take a breath.

What’s happening to me?!

She knew she was moving, but to where, she had no idea. It was a different sort of feeling—not like the weight of inertia or acceleration she was accustomed to. It pressed on her soul, the very essence of her being.

I’ve felt this before…!

A distant memory from six years ago erupted out of her subconscious. She remembered the scene clearly: the drip-drop of rainwater down her back as she was bound in rope and chain. It was only a matter of hours before her execution.

And then, inexplicably, she’d felt this tug. A hook into her soul which ripped her from her flesh and dragged her across the multiverse—the same feeling she found herself experiencing in this very moment.

This was the Transversal’s doing.

Is it taking me back…?

I don’t want to go back!

She fought the current, but it was no use. Her consciousness spiraled across causal space-time and into the hands of another twisted experiment…

And then she blinked her eyes open.

At first blurry, she focused her vision and blinked again. Her body felt… alive. The world seemed more colorful—but those glowing wires surrounded her as they had in the labs, and she briefly gave up hope.

“Did it work? Oh, God, did it really work?” someone said. She recognized her sister’s voice in an instant.

“The machine says so,” another woman replied. She had a proper British accent, and she seemed significantly older. “Just know, she may not be exactly how you remember.”

Ari sighed. “I know. That’s okay. I just… wanted to hear her talk again.”

That’s… a different perspective than the Ari of the other world.

Arufa craned her neck, trying to see the two scientists. The room was well-lit, so she had little trouble making out their figures—a stark contrast from the laboratory she’d just escaped from. She accidentally made eye contact with a shorter, red-haired scientist and panicked.

“White, she’s awake!”

“What?!” Ari cried, spinning around from her computer. Arufa winced and waited for the worst to come.

But she began to notice things were different. Ari’s hair was a light brown, not the silver it’d been in the parallel. Her yellow eyes felt softer, less detached. She’s… happy. Overjoyed.

Arufa, in her confusion, turned her head to look around—long chestnut hair fell in her face as she did. She felt no metal ring holding her head to her body, and certainly no plates bolted to her skull.

The British lady approached the pod; Arufa blinked as she recognized her face. Now in her mid-fifties, she could barely recognize her, but something about the woman’s mannerisms reminded her of Marsia…

“We don’t mean to startle you. I’m sure you have a lot of questions—we’ll be happy to answer any and all of them,” she said.

Ari hit a switch on her device, and suddenly the wires retracted, freeing Arufa from the machine. She slowly sat up, feeling her hands, her face, her neck. Apart from an IV in her arm and a few diodes on her forehead, nothing felt out of place. And most of all, her body felt warm.

“Where am I…?”

“A fair question to start with. You’re at Nock Laboratories. Though it’s entirely possible it doesn’t exist in your home reality,” Dr. Lilia answered.

Arufa watched Ari race over to the pod; she saw a warm smile on her sister’s face for the first time in years. The woman took her hand and cupped it with her own.

“Arufa. That’s your name, right?”

“...Ari.”

“You know who I am!” she cried. “I’m so sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. I should explain what’s happening. So, in 2045, we proved the–”

“The Many-Worlds Interpretation.”

“How did you…?”

Arufa weakly brought her legs out of the machine and stood up. “You made a machine called the Transversal and tried to bring me back from the dead, Ari. Is that right?”

Dr. Lilia and Ari looked at each other for a moment, perplexed. “N-no,” Ari said, looking back at Arufa. “The body you’re in now has been in comatose for six years.”

“Six… years?”

“That’s right,” Lilia said. “It’s difficult to process, but I’m more interested in knowing–”

“I’m home…!” Arufa wailed, falling into her sister’s arms. “You brought me back! I’m back!”

Ari held her embrace. Though thoroughly confused, she accepted these emotions. “Aru, why don’t we figure this out for a second?”

She pulled back and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m just… overwhelmed. This is amazing.”

“First order of business,” Dr. Lilia said. “How do you know about the Transversal?”

“I was wondering that, too,” said Ari.

“Okay, this is going to sound insane. Do you promise you’ll believe me when I tell you?”

Marsia raised an eyebrow, but Ari nodded vigorously. “Please,” she said.

“You said I’ve been in a coma for six years, right? Six years ago, my consciousness got ripped out by a Transversal from another universe. I’ve been in the wrong parallel for all that time.”

Ari covered her mouth, her eyes wide in shock. “You mean…”

“You brought me back, Ari. This is my world.”

“Oh my God!” Ari whimpered, falling back into her sister’s embrace. “I mean… I don’t even… words! Words!”

Dr. Lilia smiled warmly. “What an unexpected surprise.”

“Marsia, you’re alive, too!” Arufa said.

The doctor’s face wrinkled in confoundment. “How do you know my name?”

“You were… one of the test subjects, across the parallel. We were friends.”

A grin of disbelief spread across her old face as she averted her gaze. “How jarring.”

“But… in that world, you died of blood cancer, I think. So, what’s up with that?”

“I did have some cancer problems when I was younger. But I was able to get an early diagnosis and treatment from Nock Labs before it got worse. My doctor back then was fantastic.”

“Wow,” Arufa said.

“Wait, how were we friends if I died of blood cancer?”

“It’s complicated,” she replied quickly. “But, uh, I’m wondering. Where did you pull my consciousness from? Because some crap went down, and I thought I was already in my world.”

Ari looked over to her computer. “Well, we found your signature in a parallel pretty close to ours, but when we tried to transfer you over, it said you weren’t there anymore. So, we tracked the signature down hoping to see where you’d gone, and… let’s just say it’s not hard to pull a consciousness back to the place it should be.”

“But this is still my world, right?”

“Yeah! The way you described things, a hundred percent—this is your world. We just had to bounce you across causal space-time to get you here.”

Arufa stretched her arms; though they were atrophied as they’d been before, they felt fresh and alive. Her body was her own, the real her, the human she’d been before it all.

“What was I like in the other world?” Ari asked.

You probably killed a bunch of people by shifting the laboratory over. You were a psychopath with no regard for human life. But… I won’t say that.

“In that world, I died. I got executed, so she went crazy trying to bring me back. She was nothing like you—I didn’t even realize she was a version of you until her assistant said her name—oh, wait, where’s Ghiles?”

Ari blinked. “Ghiles?”

“Yeah, he was your lab assistant over the parallel. Shouldn’t he exist here, too?”

“...I’ve never heard that name.”

“It rings a bell,” Marsia added, “but… I can’t say I know him, either.”

“That’s weird,” Arufa said.

“Well, parallels always differ in small ways. My lab assistant is Dr. Lilia,” Ari said. “And Arufa, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you back.”

I’m really home, back where I belong… I don’t know what’ll happen with the terrorist attack—maybe I’ll be pardoned? Maybe not. I’m not sure it matters so much right now.

I learned something from Dr. Ghiles across the parallel. “To exist is to remember,” is what he said. Even if Ghiles isn’t around in this world—even if none of the others are—they exist in my memories.

The Many-Worlds Interpretation says they’re alive and well out there, no matter what. But then, the versions of them I knew might not be. So, I’ll keep them alive in memory, where they’ll stay with me until the day I die.

And the other thing I learned from Ghiles is, people can change. I know he did. And it’s not about nature or nurture, or any sort of rehabilitation; it’s willful. I’ll change if I put the effort forward. I’ll be less terrified of what the future has to hold, no matter how perilous it is.

She looked Ari in the eyes, remembering simultaneously the monster she’d been and the angel she was now. Our memories impact everyone around us. One person doing the wrong thing can send anyone on a destructive spiral.

Then she turned to Marsia. On the other hand, one person doing the right thing can save a hundred lives. Sometimes it’s hard to realize the impact we have on the people we love. It can be easy to get lost in yourself, not seeing the consequences of your actions before you take them.

But the truth is, humans are flawed. We hurt each other. We hurt ourselves. We create each other’s memories from the moment we meet. Our entire path of existence can change in a single instant—one brave decision, or one cowardly choice, can split a parallel in two.

It’s not about avoiding choices. That’s impossible. I know because I tried to, and my choice to wait left Marsia dead. Every day, inevitably, we make a million choices, and we split a million parallels. So it’s about making the right choices. And every little thing you do matters.

Arufa glanced over to Ari again. “I love you, Ari.”

“I love you too, Aru.”

We have the power to create universes; infinite in number, branching like fractals. It’s the power to hurt and the power to heal. It’s the power to shape the world the way we see fit.

...

We owe it to each other to shape it for the better, don’t we?