The Uncanny Mountain

Are you Lonely since you lost your true love?

Miss’em so much you can’t carry on?

Visit Tempormance Inc.

We can introduce you to alternate versions of your lost love.

Through the Science of our Lords, we have the pick of any trillion . nearby alternate universes…

Our fees are reasonable, considering what we deliver.

Other Universes… Are Your Oyster!

Slurp it down and enjoy the feelings you thought you’d never have again!

The Tempormance way… [Disclaimers apply]

I’m entranced by her.

The glow of her sun-lit shoulders. Her elegant posture and svelte figure revealed by her wind-rippled summer dress. Those startlingly deep blue eyes that are so unique. So delightful to gaze into, framed by the quirky beauty of her face. I am in love with her so deeply right now. More so than even when I met her. Or when I married her. She is my Daniella. My one and only.

Did I say unique? I didn’t mean quite that.

One and only? Not quite that either.

I pause in the subtle wind to take her in before I approach. She’s everything I ever wanted in a woman, in a wife. That cute look that dimples her face when she’s thinking far off thoughts. That evil glint when she’s up to no good. I really appreciate her figure, tall, with sculpted shoulders and perfect hips. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this purple dress before. Even though I love how beautiful it makes her in this moment in the sunshine, it does trouble me that I haven’t seen it before.

What else might be different?

She’s spotted me and waves ridiculously as if I wasn’t already staring right at her. She is too precious. So adorable I want to strangle her. Just kidding…

I. Love. Daniella. Always have.

Ever since I saw her working at Dairy Queen back when we were teenagers.

She had the smarts to equal her small-town beauty. I love that.

Her sense of humor is bold and original. But not unique.

She makes goofy gestures as I walk up and we hug gorgeously. The smell of her hair and skin is intoxicating. The familiar smell of her jasmine perfume sends me into a fugue of joy. I’m in Nirvana just holding her again. I want to make love to her right now, even on this Sunday morning at the open deck of our favorite restaurant. I hold the hug longer than I should.

It’s her! It’s my Daniella!

She makes a mock gasping sound and I release my grip on her. She grins mischievously, obviously reading my body language and my desire to take her here and now. “Hold that thought, Tiger.”

A friendly waiter we both (I think) like, comes over and greets us. He deftly seats us under an orange umbrella with a view of the leafy courtyard. Sitting down, I ignore the menu and just gaze at her happily. She chats merrily about something that amused her on the way here. I’m not listening to her. Her words don’t matter.

It’s the little things I recognize. Her fleeting gestures, reactions. Her beautiful face’s myriad of micro-expressions. That’s the key to the soul. Eyes are great. Daniella has a great pair. That crystal blue… so almost unique. I mean I’ve seen that exact shade of blue before. A few times. Her beauty is consistent.

I observe she’s wearing the heart-shaped platinum necklace I gave her on our first anniversary. I smile over memories of drunkenly running into the ocean at Jones Beach, crashing through the waves all the while laughing our asses off. Her dangling earrings are the ones I got her when we went to Milan the summer before she died. Now that was a vacation…

She’s got the same tiny scar on her chin, easy to miss, but somehow it adds to her beauty and allure.

I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to wake up in a world where your love, your spouse has a different smile? Or a different glint or hue of her eyes? Or a totally new twitch of her nose? How could you accept that? Why would anybody ask you to?

I think that’s why I do all this. Because I love her.

Obviously.

What other human being has traveled to multiple (I’m talking dozens and dozens) alternate universes to track down his lost love? What husband of lore or literature has sought out his perfect loving and faithful wife more than I? Name one. Don’t bother, it’s me.

I did that for my Daniella. I am doing it for my Daniella.

It’s what we do. Right? I’m not the only romantic out there. We’re all bros in this.

It just so happens that after the world-quaking events of ‘The Half-World War,’ where K bombs wiped all of Asia and North America off the globe, I just happened to earn a bank vice presidency in one of the fourteen World Bank Powers that ascended to vertical power. So, I can afford any of the ridiculously high fees that Tempormance Inc. gets away with charging.

Trust me, I did my due diligence. I researched the science. I’m not going to let just anybody liquify my atoms and shoot me through a Rosenberg bridge. The science checks out. Astrophysics… quantum physics. Implications of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and quantum entanglement. The Lords of Science okayed it for commercial application. Other societies might have caused a war of dominance with this discovery. My universe turned it into a mega-conglomerate corporate entity that technically is its own country. Such is the wisdom of the Lords of Science. Such are the blessings bestowed upon us. We also have excellent dental (thank you, Dentifrice!). I had a lawyer go over the contract. Then I had another one. It’s what you do. Never take unnecessary risks when it comes to your money and your wife.

If you love your wife. I mean really. Really love. Her.

I think that’s what’s most beautiful about romantic love. It's settling down into the world of one particularly beautiful, funny, clever, sexy and unique person. Making them your whole world. Maybe it’s crazy. But it’s what you do. When you really fall in love with someone and catch their gravity and settle into a lovely, sensual orbit that can stand the test of eons of other gravitational forces.

That’s love.

That’s my love for Daniella.

She orders what she always orders. “Ranchero salad with no chicken and extra bacon.” Good. Quirky as hell. She’s my girl…

She has to be.

It’s too sad to contemplate otherwise. Too horrible.

No one knows. No one can relate. It’s something you only know if you go through it. And I don’t wish that on anyone, or any of me. My alternates, all living in their own slightly ajar universes, all love Daniella too. No doubt.

But I’m the one that gets to get her back.

She doesn’t die in all of the alternate universes. Just some of them.

Some, perhaps many (it’s ridiculously hard to quantify percentages when infinities are involved) universes have a Daniella that’s alive and well. Like this one. This universe. This Daniella.

I just want my wife back.

Not the alternates, not the variants. I’m looking for my Daniella, who has the same experiences, the same feelings and thoughts as my original love.

“Are you going to eat that?”

She points her fork at my last bit of avocado.

I stiffen, but nod to her. She doesn’t notice my grimace and spears the thin wedge of avocado. I honestly don’t think my Daniella would do that. She didn’t dislike avocados, but she didn’t prefer them, and she certainly didn’t appreciate their delicious greeny goodness like I do.

I slowly exhale. But it’s a small thing. And I can’t be sure my Daniella wouldn’t do that. She was a free spirit, liable to do unexpected things, even things that a spouse, someone that really knows her, would find counter intuitive. Most men would be threatened by such sass and indefatigability. Not me. Daniella is everything to me and I’m ready to make this my commitment.

“I love you,” I confide.

“I know,” she scoffs.

“You’re perfect,” I tell her.

“You’re perfect,” she says back.

We laugh. We are both in love. It’s like being a little kid on Christmas morning. All is wonderful possibility.

We’re learning forward, kissing over the corner of the table. Her tongue is wonderful. Her lips, just as I remember them. She presses her legs against mine and our shoulders touch.

She breaks the kiss to ask, “Do you want to take this outside?”

I adroitly call for the check.

After I pay the bill (It’s a good thing credit card numbers and pins are remarkably uniform through most of our universe cluster), tipping waiter guy twenty two percent. You're welcome very much.

We rise from our brunch table and make our way toward the gated exit to a side street of Brooklyn. My eyes wander down and appreciate her saunter as well as the shape of her butt and its rolling motion…

My heart skips a beat.

What was that? She has a dip in her walk. I stare after her, almost colliding with another table in my shock. It’s so obvious, it’s like a tic, an awful tic. She-she dips to the side, to the left, just a little. It’s like her behind is uneven somehow. No, no, no.

I can’t look any more. I lower my eyes, stinging now, to stare at the ground, so no one notices. I can feel the eyes of our waiter guy as we leave through the wooden gate onto 16th Street. I feel like my foot is in my throat.

“What’s the matter?”

I shake my head… and try not to vomit. It’s a kind of vertigo, I’m spinning on the verge of collapse, but at the same time I’m just standing on the sidewalk on a Sunday morning.

I get ahold of myself. Breathing exercises my battle yoga sensei taught me. My body relaxes into the familiar next steps we must now take. It’s like routine, or training. You do what you do. And you do it right. I take a deep breath and look at the thing I’d earlier mistaken for my Daniella.

“I have something I want to show you.”

I’m already thinking of the secret apartment nearby. I had one in my universe. It’s what got me discovered by my Daniella, god rest her wonderful soul. Every version of me I’ve ever met so far have all rented the same secret pad where we can meet the women we fuck. And most of the time since I started utilizing Temorance Inc’s services, it’s in those apartments that I leave their dead bodies-these ‘alterselves’ of mine, knowing they won’t be discovered until well after I jump out of this universe.

I cannot explain it to this non-Daniella. I can only lead her there. She comes willingly.

...because she believes that I am her husband.

I wish I was. I wish they were my wife. But none of them are. Not so far, not a single one. It’s a sad tragic path I’m on. But I’ve got the financial resources and Temporance Inc. has the technology. I can keep trying until I get this right.

I lead this thing of a person down the narrow driveway, my stomach roiling at its alienness. I can no longer even think of her as a woman. I lead it down a few steps to a single door basement apartment.

“Let me show you what your husband has been up to.” I unlock the door and lead the way in, over the plastic sheeting covering the carpet.

“I can’t wait,” she says as she follows me in.

And she doesn’t.