I did speak again, eventually, to ask Bill more about this place. It took me a while, though. In the silence that followed his statement about finally looking past time and space, I found myself wondering, despite my usual confidence in Bill’s scientific competence, if this really was an experience he had had, if he had truly spoken to the - souls? - of those he had loved and lost - or if he had just found the right mix of chemicals and such to create a mindfuck that rivaled those acid trips of his.
But if it was true? Then the ramifications of this discovery - for the scientific community, for the world at large, for me - were beyond my brain’s ability to process.
For me. That was the one I wanted to avoid until Bill had left and I could think on it alone, but as he sat there speaking even more slowly than he had before, it continued to creep into the crevices of my mind, and I found myself thinking of those I might see in this place, were I ever to try this device and go there. Or die, I suppose.
I hadn’t seen a huge handful of people move on in my time - knock on wood - both sets of grandparents, a colleague I considered a good acquaintance at an old job, a neighbor with whom I got along well, and two friends from my childhood. But I never gave much thought to what happens after you go. Part of the dirt in the ground, I guess I always figured.
Until recently, Bill had thought the same thing.
I gave myself a slight shake - Bill was talking, answering my questions. There’d be plenty of time to think on this later. Later.
“...place could be some kind of, I don’t know, waiting room where you see these people before you move on to your next life, the next plane. I think that in that case, Earth would be the first plane, though,” he drawled. He was on the scotch again, although he had at least asked before pouring himself another glass this time. “For us, for our...consciousnesses, Earth would be the first plane. It stands to reason that this life here on Earth is the first in - in who knows how many lives in how many different...different...but…”
“Bill,” I said, my mind spinning like a top, “did you not think to ask any of them about any of this?”
He looked at me, frowning.
“Well,” he said, “like I said, I absolutely freaked out the first time I went there. The ones I saw first - my parents and grandparents - kept trying to comfort me, probably thinking I wasn’t ready to accept the fact that I was dead. But when I went the second time, I...I don’t know. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to think of the why or how behind what I was seeing and hearing. I just wanted to...to experience it. To talk to them.”
He gave a start, as if just realizing he felt this way now, and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
“It was such a shock,” he said quietly, as though to himself. “To see them, and the photographs, and - “
“Photographs?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” he said, still more quietly. “All over the...the walls of this place, there were pictures, still photos of moments and memories I had shared with all of these people. I don’t ever remember a camera being there for any of them, but I wasn’t about to question that while walking amongst and talking to the dead.”
I nodded absently. My mind was drifting again, further this time, filling itself with images of those I had lost, smiling, waving, hugging...seeing them animated again, in the flesh - or something close, I supposed - and I shut my eyes tightly, as if I thought focusing hard enough might bring me there.
“You good?” Bill’s voice called from somewhere beyond a void, and my eyes shot open to see his slightly concerned face peering into mine. I took a moment to register the irony of his question before nodding a confirmation.
“I’m just sort of exhausted, I guess, and this is a lot to take in,” I said. “I mean, I’m sorry, Bill. I don’t know how you expected me to react, but...I think I just, I need to sleep on it.”
“I would expect so,” he said, with a curt nod. It was not a slight against my intelligence or a credit to his own - he knew I was right. Anybody would need to sleep on this. Even Bill would have, I’m sure, were it not for the acid.
There was the matter of one more question before I went to bed, but I decided to let it wait until the next time I saw him. It was simply too heavy to bring up just before heading off for the night.
But, and as I expected, sleep did not come easy. I tossed, I turned, I thought and thought and thought - I was used to my mind racing all the time, but tonight was an exceptionally non-stop affair. I was unable to quell the thoughts of those I had known throughout my life and the idea of seeing them and speaking with them. It was a beautiful idea, but at the same time, and for the first time in my life, I found myself wishing I didn’t think that Bill was always right.
Sometime before sunrise I took a walk around the block in an effort to calm myself down, but all that did was get my thoughts racing that much faster. It was long after the day dawned bright and busy outside that sleep arrived, and with it fitful dreams of what I might see, past time and space.
...
When I finally did get up - late, even by my standards - the subject was still on my mind, but my head was slightly clearer thanks to the little sleep I did manage to get (lack of rest doesn’t always impact me for a few days, and back before this cursed publisher started telling me I had no original ideas left I would stay up well into the night and write until I was ready to pass out), and I knew I had to talk to Bill as soon as I could. Not by phone - I’d need to see him face to face for this, plus I wanted to look with my own eyes at whatever he had built that had taken him to wherever it had taken him. There would be no time for breakfast, and even if there was, my stomach was far too tight and tense to take anything to eat, so I simply threw on a jacket, got in the car and made for the ranch.
It was about twenty kilometres from my house, give or take, and required the use of empty back roads. The drive helped me clear my head a little more. Not entirely, but as good as I could get it was good enough.
Pulling into the stone driveway, heart beginning to hammer, I parked and made my way towards Bill’s lab, a small stone garage next to a farmhouse that was little bigger than his makeshift workspace. The door was partly open, which I knew meant he was already in there - he rarely closed the door when he worked, for some reason - and with a sudden jolt I hoped he had not gone back into the machine. He said it was a week here - that was too long to wait. Could I wake him, if he was in that thing?
I found myself running by the time I reached the old wooden door, and when I pushed past it, there was Bill, sitting at his desk, writing furiously in a small notebook. He looked even more ragged and crazed than he had at my house the previous night, and I doubted he had gotten any sleep at all. He looked up at my entry, nodding as though for all the world he had been expecting me to bash down his door out of the blue - that was usually his style, not mine, but he was not a man that was easily surprised - before returning his attention to the notebook.
“Are you...are you documenting...it?” I asked.
“I’ve been documenting it since I came back the first time,” he said, looking up again and frowning slightly as if to say I should have known he’d do that. I should have, as it were, but I had been too focused on phrasing what I needed to - needed to - ask him to think of much else.
“Right,” I muttered. There was little pretext for beating around the bush, and I needed to get right to the point before I burst.
“Bill,” I said. “You know I respect the boundaries of our professional relationship, and that I’m not - not normally supposed to ask you this, but -”
“Yes,” he said, without looking up from his writings.
“ - I have to kn - what?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, you can use the machine, once I run the details of everything by you once more. I doubt you fully paid attention the first time I went over it. Don’t look at me like that, of course I knew you’d ask me that. I knew before I told you.”
I should have, too, I thought.
“When can I use it?” I asked anxiously.
“As soon as you can free up a week.”
“I can do that right now,” I said automatically.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re ready? Just like that? You barely found out about this 18 hours ago, you know, and -”
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “Like you said, you knew I was going to ask you. Sooner the better, if I’m gonna do it, right? Just let me write an email to my students and publishers. I want to do it today.”
A ghost of a grin flashed on Bill’s face as he rose from his desk without another word and walked over to a darkened corner of the garage, indicating I should follow with a slight incline of his head. Holding my breath, I saw right away what he was taking me towards: a small, cloth-covered shape sitting on a table in the darkest part of his lab, the only objects around it a single lamp and chair. It didn’t seem like the type of machine that could change the world, but then again, I don’t know what I was expecting.
“This is it?” I said quietly.
“It is,” he said, nodding. His serious manner had returned so quickly that the smile may as well have never been, and I felt a sudden tension reverberate throughout the lab. I found myself staring at that cloth-covered shape, staring at this alleged bridge between the realms of the living and the dead, and was torn between an urge to activate it right then and there - as though I had any idea how - and a desire to run to my car and never look back.
“Are you, uh, gonna write those emails?”
I was startled to hear Bill’s voice behind me. Coming to myself, I realized I had been moving closer and closer to the table without noticing - I was barely an arm’s length away. I gave myself a shake: losing focus would do no good. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the machine, however.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Yeah, I...give me a…”
I heard Bill settle himself in the table’s only chair as though he had all the time and patience on the planet. Perhaps he did - I thought my own career-related habits were bad, but Bill’s contempt for the concept of deadlines made me seem like a shining example of punctuality and responsibility.
The emails were done in the blink of an eye: just a quick note that I would be absent for at least a week “due to a personal matter.”
For a moment, Bill and I simply stared at one another over the small clothed device, a silent, heavy anticipation hanging in the air like fog, before he spoke again.
“Are you going to write about this?”
Holy shit - how had I not realized it before? I was suddenly faced with a subject that was more than interesting to write about, not to mention the first non-fiction idea I would ever be able to bring my publishers - the genre alone was something I could show them to file under “new.”
On the other hand, what would I say? What could I say?
“I don’t know,” I said, half in response to Bill, half in response to that last thought.
He nodded again, and the empty anticipation reached a peak, my eyes glued to the clothed shape on the table once again.
“May I?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Please,” Bill said, just as quietly.
...
It was like a switch.
As with my first vision of the machine, I don’t know what I had been expecting, but that’s probably the closest thing I can describe as far as a transition goes: like a switch, from here to there, in the blink of an eye, in an eternal second.
It was just like Bill had said: a colourless room. Simple as that, a colourless room. The walls, though. I didn’t know how far away they were, and it seemed impossible to tell. Walking towards them made them seem neither closer nor farther. Perhaps there was no discernible concept of space here, either, though I figured Bill would have mentioned that.
There was no sound. Nothing. I snapped my fingers next to my ear, and the sharp click reverberated like a cannon around me. I jumped about a foot in the air, but the silence returned before my feet hit the ground.
Nothing but colourless, infinitely distant walls, all around me. Nothing to see or hear.
“Hello?” I called, the sound reverberating again, this time echoing instead of cutting off abruptly.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice behind me.
I turned so fast that she seemed to snap into my field of vision, nonetheless taking the tiny fraction of time it took to look to wonder who amongst those I had lost this would be.
I was shocked and speechless to see I did not recognize her.
Damnit, Bill.
Before I had ‘left’, he had gone over the mechanics of the machine again - a few hours here is a week there, but there was really no such thing as ‘time’ in this place so I should just use my best judgment. That was really the only warning he had given me. He didn’t say anything about people I didn’t know being here. Had he not seen any? Was this perhaps someone I had once known, but forgotten as our lives took separate paths?
The woman was smiling, a kind and patient look.
“Hello,” she said again.
I stared back, still speechless.
Her smile took on a sad quality, although it retained its kind manner.
“I know it’s hard to remember,” she said, her voice a murmur. “But, you do remember. You remember me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to this, either.
“You remember from the very, very early days of your life, your earliest. You remember me. Not like this, of course - much, much younger. You were a year and a half or so when I died. I was barely one. But you remember.”
A sudden flood in my head. A torrent of memories long forgotten, memories from a time I should not have been able to recall: a young girl, barely half a year old, laughing, playing, crawling, sleeping, crying, experiencing all the joys of that first year of life.
Yes, I remembered.
“My sister,” I said, barely speaking the words. They hung like a thick cloud, my brain reeling from the rushing recollections of a childhood long past and long forgotten.
Her smile widened.
“Yes,” she said. “Your sister. Do you remember my name?”
“Clarissa,” I said, although I had not, in fact, until the moment I answered. Clarissa. My sister, Clarissa.
“Yes,” she said again, laughing. A lovely sound.
Oh, but this was happening far too fast. I had not expected this. It was happening far too fast. My head reeled. My sister, my long lost, long forgotten sister Clarissa, who passed from a fatal virus at far, far, far too young of an age. My parents no doubt thought I did not remember, and would not have wanted to remind me for the pain it might cause everyone, so she was never brought up after she died, and as it happened they were right. I have a memory of crying, now, crying for days, having not had the slightest understanding of what had happened but knowing it felt like a small part of my 18-month-old self was gone, and that I would never quite be whole again.
But here she was, decades older than she was when she passed - but here, nonetheless. I knew it was her. In my soul, I knew this was Clarissa. My sister, Clarissa.
According to my own concept of time, I had been here less than five minutes.
Far too fast.
I was too shocked to do anything but stand there slack-jawed and stare at her. Did she look like I may have thought she would, had I remembered her? No way of knowing.
How did I tell her how I was here?
As if that cued the question, she asked, “Was it your time, too?”
I shook my head and sighed. “No. Not quite. And I’ll tell you my story - if you tell me yours, and how you’re fully aged instead of barely a year old. I, um, I didn’t expect this.”
And so we talked. I explained about Bill and the machine, she explained about this place, this nameless, timeless, colourless place.
“And for those like me, those who died far too young, we’re able to...to grow, I suppose is the word - although there really is no such thing as ‘time’, here - into what we would have in life, to meet and speak with the people who knew and loved us, to be given the chances we were denied.”
“So - so mom and dad will see you again? And you’ll see them?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “And you’ll see them again, once it’s your time, once it’s their time.”
She suddenly frowned.
“I can’t believe you’re here like this, though,” she said quietly. “I can’t...I can’t believe what your friend did. How long can you stay?”
“In terms of...uh, Earth hours?” I asked, and when she nodded, I shrugged. “Bill said a few, but I don’t know, maybe it’s different for everyone.”
“Can you...can you come back?” she asked, more quietly still.
“I...think so,” I said. “And, on that note, are there...others here? Our grandparents? I had an old co-worker pass, and a neighbor, and Bill said he saw people he knew long ago...I was wondering…?”
She smiled again. “Yes, they’re here. You’ll see them soon, I suspect. This place tends to...time things right, so as not to overwhelm you.”
And so we waited, still talking as we did so, her asking questions about my life and me asking about her encounters with our grandparents here. As we did, I noticed that the colourless walls appeared to be coming to life.
I realized why: all of them were suddenly projecting an endless array of random photographs from throughout my life. And just like Bill had said, several of them were from times for which there was definitely no camera present. I stopped, staring at the silent display of moments and memories from a life lived, of people I had known at various points in my years, family members, friends from school, friends from different jobs, friends from all walks of life, shown to me in one infinitely expanding display.
It was too much.
Clarissa simply waited, all the time in the world in a world with no time.
After several longing looks at the memories on the wall, I saw them. Both pairs of my grandparents, as I remembered them, all of them beaming at me with love and joy.
“You’re here.” My maternal grandmother said the words as though that confirmed it as a fact. “You’re here. You’ve - moved on?”
“Not quite,” I said, shaking my head and laughing. “But - let’s not go into that, yet. I just want to...to see you and talk to you again, for a little while.”
Too much.
But it didn’t matter: they were here. They were here, they were talking and listening and laughing, and each moment brought me to a higher level of contentment. As I was in the midst of explaining how I came to be here again, more figures appeared in the colourless distance, making their way over to us: my neighbour, my co-worker, my two childhood friends.
And then, from that same colourless distance came not another sight, but a sound: a soft, joyful bark. I had barely a second to register it, to come to terms with yet another level of disbelief, when a brown blur of paws and tail came into my vision, flying towards me like a bullet, running straight into my stomach and knocking me off guard for the split second it took me to realize that this, too, felt too real not to be.
“Toby?” I said, my voice cracking with emotion.
Toby. My dog. My traveling companion. My best friend. He was here, too, just as the others were. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to ask Bill something like this, but obviously this place wasn’t limited to human beings.
“Hi, buddy,” I said quietly, scratching the spot behind his ear he loved so much, my eyes welling with tears as he stared up with that unmistakable look of love in his brown eyes. “I missed you.”
And suddenly, the feeling of this all being too much was gone, replaced by an overwhelming sense of contentment, of coming together at a reunion long overdue. There was shaking of hands and hugs and laughter and tears, everyone crowding around me, Toby running circles in joy, all of us saying how good, how wonderful, how beautiful it was to see one another again.
And then, all too soon, there it was: a switch, an eternal second, and I was gasping awake in a chair in Bill’s lab, Bill himself looking up from his desk and rushing over with an excited look on his otherwise tired face.
“So?” he said anxiously. “What did you see?”