Sister Universe
“Does that mean you and Harry didn’t…?” said Tess.
“Didn’t what?” said Vivian.
“It’s just that I heard you…I mean in my universe I heard you and Harry talking, and you went out to his secret circle of trees with a radio playing romantic music, and I thought…”
“You thought we were having an affair?” said Vivian, suppressing a laugh.
“It explained a lot.”
“Listen, Tess, of course I can’t know what happened in your universe, but I seriously doubt that Harry and I ever had an affair in any universe.”
“Infinite possibilities doesn’t mean every possibility,” said Tess. “Harry taught me that.”
“Harry was right.”
“You weren’t plotting an assignation with each other; you were plotting an assignation with another universe.”
“In this universe, what Harry wanted more than anything was to get you back. He was prepared to take any risk to see Tess—any version of Tess—again. But Marie was dead set against it. She insisted the risk was too great—to Harry and to the rest of humanity. And she kept telling Harry, ‘It wouldn’t be Tess—not our Tess.’ Your mother would probably have been a lot happier if we were having an affair, rather than plotting a scientific experiment that would leave Harry dead and Marie with a daughter who wasn’t her daughter. ”
“A daughter she could never love,” said Tess.
“I suppose that’s right,” said Vivian. “In a way, she blamed you for even existing. If you didn’t exist, Harry might still be alive.
But even before the night of the alignment, Marie and Harry were broken.
Your death, I mean Tess’s death, almost destroyed Harry, and it did destroy Marie.
The marriage was on fumes. They stopped sleeping in the same bed, stopped eating meals together, they barely spoke to each other.
Harry begged Marie to return to the island the next summer, but she refused, until her therapist suggested it might be good for her—both to get away and to confront the site of her anguish.
I think Harry thought that bringing you back from another universe would be the grand romantic gesture that would win back his estranged wife.
But in this universe, I’m not sure he would have taken such a risk just to repair his marriage.
Harry wanted Tess. Harry loved Tess more than anything.
More than science, more than this island, even more than Marie.
Anyone who saw you together could see. You were like a part of Harry, like his arm or his foot, or… ”
“His heart,” said Richard.
“Yes,” said Vivian. “His heart. After you died, he devoted himself wholly to studying what he called the alignment of universes. And Harry learned several things that led up to that night. He tried, usually without success, to convince other members of the Paradox Club, about the importance of what he discovered, because Harry was nothing if not a serious scientist. But he also plotted how he could use that knowledge to bring you here.”
“What did he learn?” said Tess.
“Because Harry believed that every UFO we had ever collected at the Paradox Club had come from the same UOO…”
“UOO?” said Tess.
“Universe of origin,” said Richard.
“Harry called it our sister universe. Now Harry already knew that there are certain places where universes are more likely to touch, and he knew the circle of trees here on the island was one of those places, because at least three UFOs had turned up there over the years. But what Harry discovered that no one else knew, and that no one believed, even when he shared the information with the club, was that he could mathematically predict the precise moments those alignments would occur.”
“And October fourteenth is one of those moments,” said Tess.
“October fourteenth, 2015, at five twenty-two a.m.,” said Vivian.
“For God’s sake,” said Richard, “you didn’t have to tell her the time.”
“So, Harry went to the club and proposed attempting to make contact,” said Vivian.
“Something the club was created to prevent,” said Richard.
“That’s debatable,” said Vivian.
“And debate is exactly what the members of the Paradox Club did. They called it the Great Debate.”
“And no one argued more strongly against making contact than Marie,” said Vivian.
“Marie argued against Harry?” said Tess.
“Indeed,” said Richard. “And she never returned to the Paradox Club after that day.”
“During the debate,” said Vivian, “Marie made a motion to destroy all the UFOs kept by the Paradox Club.”
“At the time that was four hundred and sixteen items,” said Richard, “all but one of which resided in the club vault.”
“Why would she do that?” said Tess.
“Because Marie believed that any object from another universe would naturally try to pull its way back into its UOO,” said Vivian.
“And if four hundred and sixteen items pulled together, they might create an opening,” said Richard, “assuming Pilgrim 3 was foolish enough to take them out of the copper-lined vault.”
“And Marie knew—partly because Harry taught her, which is the ironic part—that any connection between universes could be potentially catastrophic,” said Vivian.
“But Harry ignored all that?” said Tess
“He did,” said Vivian. “Because he loved you.”
“He loved Tess,” said Richard. “The Tess from this universe. But he would have loved you, too.”
“So, all this is my fault?” said Tess.
“No,” said Richard, putting an arm around Tess’s shoulders. “This is absolutely not your fault.”
“I should have stopped him,” said Tess. “In my universe I should have stopped him. I saw him and Vivian go into the circle. I saw them take the radio. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I knew I should stop them, and I didn’t.”
“I don’t know what happened in your universe,” said Vivian, “but in this universe, no one could have stopped Harry.”
“Harry in this universe was trying to get his dead daughter back,” said Tess, “but what about Harry in my universe? Why did he take the risk?”
“If I had to guess,” said Vivian, “I’d say it was his complete inability to subdue his scientific curiosity.
Don’t get me wrong, Harry was no Pilgrim 3.
He didn’t want to connect universes for personal glory and a place in the scientific history books.
And of course he had no idea he was endangering you—that you were missing from our sister universe and it would try to replace you.
But even without the motivation of trying to recover his dead daughter, I could imagine Harry wanting to satisfy his own curiosity about whether it could be done.
Of course, I can never know for sure unless I meet Harry in that universe. ”
“But you would never do that,” said Tess. “You said yourself an organic UFO could endanger all humankind.”
“I wouldn’t go as a UFO,” said Vivian. “You see, Tess, there’s something else you should know. I’ve never explained to you the true nature of my stories.”