Chapter 37: Exploring the Universes

Thursday, October 2, 1986

Amy gave me a hug and kiss at breakfast. That wasn’t unusual, but it was especially welcome after such an intense night.

“I have been thinking about it much too much,” she said, smiling. “Before I say anything else, I must say ‘thank you.’ Being included in this is beyond anything I thought possible! It feels transformative.”

Then she added, “It also lets me say something I did not even consider saying before.”

She paused, grinned, and said, in full Wednesday Addams style, “I am glad you have died.”

Jas, Paige, Cammie, and Mel broke out laughing. After putting on a thoughtful face for a few seconds, Angie did, too.

I chuckled and said, “Considering the results, I am, too.”

“And me!” Angie said.

“And we are all glad they died!” Paige said.

“But we very much do not want them to die again!” Amy said, still grinning.

“Nooooo! That would be bad!” Cammie said, with the others in firm agreement.

Amy said, “I will have many questions. There is so much to learn! But ... coming along on this adventure is beyond anything I thought I might do, and I am very grateful we found each other.”

“We are, too,” Jas said. “So much of this is ... well. Chance? Fate? Destiny? Whichever you think it is, perhaps. We don’t know. But we do know it’s unpredictable, and little decisions have enormous consequences sometimes.”

“Always true,” Cammie said. “But I think we’re more aware of it than most people.”

“If not for a bad choice we made together, Cammie might not have gotten into trouble with her parents,” Mel said. “But if we hadn’t messed that up, she might never have gotten up the nerve to ask. And if she hadn’t asked, our lives would be different. And lesser. It’s things like that.”

We talked a bit more, but everyone had to get to class. I was pretty sure we’d talk a lot more tonight, though.

Classes were fine, thankfully. We’d all kicked ass in Democratic Theory, as expected. Lynn, Susanne, Roger, and Kip all thanked us for organizing the group. We were taking next week off, with our next meeting tentatively planned for the 15th.

I still didn’t see any reason to suspect Lynn of being like us. Jas and I were watching her, but neither of us saw any surreptitious looks at us or the like. If she was like us, she was very, very good. I was very good myself, but if Lynn was looking for suspicious behavior on my part, I would probably get caught. We needed to keep an eye on her, after all.

We left messages for Laura and Jane, basically saying ‘Amy’s in the club and all is well.’ We would need to talk more, but it wasn’t urgent for either of them to know more now. Laura was included in the Sunday calls and we could talk over anything we needed to. Angie and I needed to schedule a check-in with Jane, but we didn’t know when.

We had dinner at Hullabaloo Cafe, joining Amy there. Trev was working, and it was nice to catch up a little. After dinner, we headed to the MSC for ‘Silent Running’. I’d always liked it, and so did the others. We all found it hard to love, though. The ending was definitely a downer, and there were quite a few problems with the script.

Still — and especially for its time — the special effects were top-notch, and it was an unusual story, one worth telling.

In a surprise to no one, Amy asked for some time with Jas and me after the movie. We settled back in the bedroom.

“I wanted to reiterate what I said this morning first,” Amy said. “This is amazing. I am happy and grateful to be a part of this. And it likely goes without saying, but I believe you. The story is consistent, and it’s big and complicated. That, and ... you are trustworthy people.”

“Thank you,” Jas said. “I understand! When Steve told me, ‘Do I believe this?’ was a big question. The answer, for me, was that there were many little things I could see now that I couldn’t before, and his story explained all of them. It wasn’t just Laura, though Laura was very hard to explain any other way. Oh, I’d accepted the explanation because ... how could it be anything else? But once there was something else, it fit much better.”

Amy nodded. “Yes. And I think I should also say that it does not bother me that I didn’t know before, and that some things were either false or omitted. This is far too significant to share without serious consideration. That means many things can’t be said.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s been a concern every time.”

Amy chuckled and said, “It will be fun to know when you know something in advance, especially when it seems like you could not. For instance, you must have seen ‘Aliens’ before we saw it.”

“About forty years before,” I said, chuckling. “And several times in between. But the last time would probably have been twenty years ago or more.”

“Which is absurd, of course,” Jas said. “We’re used to that. You haven’t been in one of those discussions where Steve or Angie do a thing for the first time that they’d done before.”

“The most recent one was when I flew out of Austin’s airport,” I said. “It was, by the calendar, the first time I’d flown from there. But I flew from there many times in the later 1990s, before they closed it and the new airport opened. The new airport that isn’t even a vague plan, thus far.”

Amy rolled her eyes, smiling.

“I understand,” she said. “And the others put up with this because they love you.”

“And because it’s fun,” Jas said, smiling. “And because it tells us something about Steve and Angie and our relationships to them. One of the things it says is that it matters that we’re doing something for ‘the first time,’ even if Steve or Angie has also done it before. I’m sure they’re occasionally jaded by something that’s new to us, but that’s rare. Mostly, they’re as enthusiastic as we are. Sometimes more, I think!”

“Sometimes it is more,” I said, nodding. “Because I know what I think of something, but I want to see it through their eyes. And also because it’s often been more years than I’ve been alive since I’ve seen something. I’m twenty! Can it count if I saw something forty years ago?”

“It can,” Jas said, giggling. “But sometimes it also doesn’t. We got into that a bit over Steve’s kids.”

“We didn’t talk about your kids at all,” Amy said, looking curious.

“So much to cover!” I said. “My ex-wife and I adopted two kids. Jas’s point is that they don’t exist. They can’t, right? They were born more than a decade from now. But, for me, I raised them from infants to adults. How could they not exist? To me, they’re out there in another universe, living their lives. By now, hopefully long over the worst of the grief from their father dying. For Jas, they don’t exist yet, and that’s perfectly sensible for her.”

“So very interesting,” she said. “It feels to me that having been a parent must give you an incredible amount of insight you could not otherwise have.”

“We think Steve is going to be a terrific dad,” Jas said. “Partly because he’s already raised kids, and partly because that’s who he is. One day, we’ll have to decide whether we tell our kids the full truth about their dad’s life.”

“That sounds complicated,” Amy said.

“It probably will be,” I said, chuckling.

“Let me see. Ah! I wanted to ask...” she said. After a hesitation, she added, “You are planners, all of you. In different ways, and you are all flexible. Still ... you have money. Gambling winnings, your investment in P.C.’s Limited — which I understand is more potential money than actual money — and so forth. You must have goals.”

“We do,” Jas said. “Getting rich is more of a tactic than a goal. We won’t turn it down, but the intention is to be in a position to do good things.”

I nodded and said, “Angie and I eventually settled on ‘Make the world better,’ more or less. That’s very broad, and maybe everyone wants that, but ... our vision of ‘better’ is at least along the lines of the Robber Barons, feeling an obligation to use our wealth to do things of general good. But it’s not just that. I’ve lived through very messy political times. There’s no point going into specifics, but I would like to avoid the worst of them. Can we? I don’t know. Some things are inevitable. Pulling back the curtain a bit — because it’s already pulled back for the others — within twenty-five years from now, imagine the world transformed nearly as much as radio and television changed things. Imagine the average person being able to put out as much material as they want — written, spoken, video, whatever — in a way that anyone who wants to can find it. The competition for attention will be intense, and all of it competes with traditional information sources. Most of that is inevitable. We can’t change it without seriously breaking things. But, maybe, we can build structures that mitigate the damage.”