Base Reality

“Just talk to him!” My best friend Elyssa insisted. “He’s just a person.”

“What if I say the wrong thing and he thinks I’m boring or stupid?” I whined back. In ninth grade I was pretty insecure.

“Gretchen, he already knows who you are - you’ve been going to school together for two years,” she reasoned. “If he likes you, he’s going to look for reasons to like what you have to say, or excuse them if he can’t.”

“And if he doesn’t?” I replied.

“Then to hell with him.” Her naked feet pressed on my hips and gave me a shove of encouragement, sliding me a foot on the couch. I was spending the night at her place, despite it being a school night, because my mom had to go out of town.

“And if he’s never given me a thought either way?”

“Impossible,” Elyssa insisted. Her smile gave me some confidence.

“It’s just - everything I think of to talk to him about always sounds so stupid in my head. Ahhh!” I flopped against Elyssa. “I wish life was like video game and I could just go back to my last save point if I made a bad dialog choice.”

“Hmm,” Dr. Sykora said conspicuously. He was in his pajamas, passing by from the kitchen with a cup of tea.

“What is it, Dad?” Elyssa asked patronizingly. “Have you got some kind of memory-wipe ray gun to help teenage girls talk to boys or something?” She rolled her eyes dramatically.

A lot of people referred to Dr. Sykora as a mad scientist or even evil scientist - a label that he did nothing to discourage. Most people thought it was a joke, but I knew better. For years Elyssa and I had been playing with his miraculous inventions when he wasn’t looking. And whenever I overheard business phone calls, he did sort of sound like a Bond villain.

“No, nothing like that. Forget I said anything,” he told us.

Elyssa sighed and gave him an expectant look. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of fishing for what he clearly wanted to say to us.

“Well, there is an experiment I’ve been meaning to run. Perhaps Gretchen would be interested.” I sat up and gave him my full attention. “I’ve finished refining a device. When you activate it, it puts you into a temporary alternate universe, just like the one you started in. Regardless of whatever you do there, you’ll return to this universe at the exact moment you left. Nobody but you will know anything about your adventure. It’s sort of like the save file that Gretchen was discussing.”

“And the other world just blinks out of existence?” I asked with wonder.

“Effectively.”

Elyssa took my hand. “Come on, Gretchen. You don’t need a crutch like this. Boys and girls have been talking to each other since the dawn of time. It’s easy.”