Of Another Kind Altogether Part 7
Cars and Effect
The pale, angular, supraliminal unborn child of Marilyn Mayer, conceived in cosmic tryst, stood in the town square and surveilled the possibilities. He weighed the probabilities. And he summarily dismissed the certainties.
He eyed the ten-year-old boy running across the street.
Stephen Redding had slept late on this school day. He had dressed hurriedly and ran downstairs in the hope that he wouldn’t miss the bus. When his mother, hungover from the night before, was awakened by his clomping down the stairs, she leapt out of bed and rushed the stairs. Reaching the kitchen, she saw Stephen jamming a Pop Tart into his mouth as he was leaving.”
“You missed the bus?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“What about Mr. Naugle? If you catch him, he can drop you off.”
“What about you? Why can’t you do it?” he asked his mother.
“Remember that slow leak in my tire? I barely made it home last night.”
“Why didn’t you get that looked at, Momma, when you told me about it?”
“I know. I know. Yeah.”
“OK, I’ll try to wave down Mr. Naugle when he leaves. But I’ll have to leave right now.”
“No, you have to brush your teeth.”
“Momma! I don’t wanna miss Mr. Naugle. You know I hate using the public bus. I get bullied.”
“Well, go right now, then. Brush ‘em and do it good. Now hurry.”
Stephen ran back up the stairs. He faked brushing his teeth by just running the water for a second, then he ran back down. It only took, in total, 31 seconds; had it been even 29 or 30, or even 32 seconds, the pale, supraliminal now realized, things would have gone much differently for the ten-year-old now.
Back in the past, Mr. Naugle left home without Stephen, who had bolted out the front door to see his car well down the street. Stephen shrugged his shoulders and returned to say goodbye to his mother.
“Don’t pay any attention to those bullies, now, Stephen.”
“I’ll try,” he answered, mounting his schoolbag on his bag.
The pale, angular supraliminal could smell the rarefied air above these people’s linearity as they made their way along their constrained number lines in what they considered real time.
Real time, he thought, with a droll grin.
Angus Turnbull had fallen, tripping over an uneven patch of cement on the way to his car. He was sending a text, so was unaware of the hazard. He dislocated his right index finger on the hard ground as he tried to brace his landing. It looked more bizarre out-of-joint, than it actually hurt, but the sheer look of it panicked his wife who pulled him into his car to take him to the emergency room. His wife, Annabel, began crying over his injury as she drove.
“Looks worse than it feels,” Angus reassured her. It didn’t help.
At the corner of First Street and Front Avenue, Stephen didn’t want to miss his transfer to his next bus, bullies notwithstanding. The little green man on the traffic signal began flashing to red, so he engaged a burst of speed to clear the intersection and cheat the flickering man.
Annabel Turnbull approached First and Front, and saw that the light was red; but she also saw the yellow light catty-corner so knew the light she approached would be snapping green by the time she reached the intersection. She gunned the accelerator.
She had misjudged by a half-second.
When Annabel saw young Stephen crossing her path, she swerved to avoid him.
Jon and Mary Anne Greene, butchers at the local deli, were on their way to work after volunteering to fill a shift at the grocery for time-and-a-half. But they would be late, because traffic was stalled behind the crash scene ahead.
Had Annabel and Angus Turnbull not died after striking a tree trying to avoid Stephen, Jon and Mary Anne Greene would have died, instead. Had Stephen died, being struck by Annabel’s car, only Mary Anne Green would have died, her husband Jon surviving.
The pale, angular, supraliminal, unborn child of Marilyn Mayer wished he had a magic comb to detangle the tangled web being woven incessantly in the lower dimensions. But then, such a contrivance wasn’t necessary—not at the higher dimensions. It all falls together in the end, he knew, even if it looks like a mess in Flatland.
He could see how things could be both tragic and comic simultaneously, so when his mouth opened to laugh, he could taste his tears.
Had Stephen caught his school bus, no accident would have been a possibility between him and the Turnbulls. But Jon and Mary Anne Greene would be hurtling to their own outcome. Had Angus Turnbull stepped over the uneven cement uneventfully, Annabel would still be alive to have two more children, adding even more webbing to the mix.
Stephen heard the crash behind him as he ran to the next block to transfer to his next bus, but it didn’t sound bad enough to jeopardize his day by going back to gawk. Besides, although he would miss first period, he would still be there for his science exam.
The supraliminal tabulated the odds: missing vs catching the bus for Stephen because his mother overslept because she decided to have just one more the night before; or his successfully flagging down Mr. Naugle by taking less than 31 seconds to fake his dental hygiene; or Angus Turnbull’s finger remaining unscathed and sending his car to a different destination instead of dislocating it such that his wife, Annabel, commandeered it to the new hospital destination. And with Jon and Mary Anne Greene, the flowsheet extrapolated into many other directions, had they beaten the Turnbulls to where Stephen was crossing the street.
No one had to die, but some did that day. There, and in a thousand thousand other places on Flatland, the supraliminal knew. And no deaths were preordained. None were fated. But all of them were in progress in some way. Even to Stephen’s flunking his exam that day.
The pale supraliminal unborn child of Marilyn Mayer knew all the ways all their paths were inching closer to their ends, whether in months, years, or even many decades. Now Marilyn did, too. It was her empathy that convinced her to be part of them if she could. And it was her connection with her unborn child that gave her the means.
________________
About the Creator
Gerard DiLeo
Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!
Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo
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Comments (3)
First of all, that subtitle is awesome. And the story doesn't disappoint. I'm imagining a quantum flowchart. Well, imagining it as much as my limited perception allows.
Well-wrought! It all balances out to zero, I suspect, even for the supraliminal.
But why even is her unborn child alive and living outside her womb when she is still pregnant with it? Lol. I guess that's alien shit right there hahahaha. Also, wow, so many things happened so fast. There's a typo here to Marilyn's last name: "The pale, angular, supraliminal, unborn child of Marilyn Maher wished he had a magic comb to detangle the tangled web being woven incessantly in the lower dimensions."