TRANSVERSION

All of this has come before. And since.

Ten years, two months, twelve days since Emily’s disappearance; last seen on a security vid entering her building. Emily appears as she always has in my memory, a soul finally at peace with herself. Career, a respectable boyfriend (finally!), a home to call her own. She reaches her apartment entrance, keys in the code.

Then the half-figure emerges, masked in shadow, coming into view just to her right and behind her, hands shoved deep into front pockets, head tilted down, face frustratingly hidden behind a hoodie. The figure waits, worn boots tapping back and forth, allowing Emily to pass through first; slips in after her before the doors close.

My insides turn over. My head screams.

Sis, goddammit! Look up! Just this once!

But just like all the times before, she doesn’t. The intruder follows her in. And in that moment, the future is frozen once again. And I still deny that future to myself. Again, and again and again.

#

A long-ago memory pops free – Emily and I stretched out on the beach, one of our many treks along the Outer Banks, before they were lost forever to the rising Atlantic. We’re sharing a tamarind rum smoothie, something we discovered on a trip to St. Lucia with our parents. I’m a feisty twenty-three; Sis has just turned a still naïve nineteen. We’re between semi-significant others – neither one of us had much luck there once they realized we did everything together. We’re camping out under the full moon of early spring, waiting for the nesting sea turtles’ eggs we’re pretending to baby-sit to hatch out and make their interminable way to the sea.

Sis turns to me, head resting sideways on her bowed knees, feet sunk deep in the sand, toes wiggling to get free. She is so very young, unspoiled by what remains of her future.

"What should I do with my life?"

"What life? You’re wasted."

"Be serious, Galen!"

"You’ll do what you always do."

"Which is?"

"Sleep off the day, come out swingin’ in the ‘morrow."

"That’s you, ass! You’re already out there, doing your thing. Physics stuff. Punching holes in reality. Me, I’m just punching air. Getting sore shoulders doing it, too."

"Sis, you’re still a squirt. Sky’s the limit. Me, I was always going to be a phys. Remember those kits Dad was always ordering me?"

"Yeah, damn you. I never got any mail. Pissed me off to no end."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Then tell you what? When I get back, I’ll start mailing you stuff. You know: ballet tutus, gymnastic chalk, My Little Pony shit---"

"FU! You’re no help."

We spot the first hatchlings then, emerging from their protected nests. We run down alongside them. And though we’re not supposed to be doing this, we turn them one-eighty from the waves at high tide and back to the shore, only to watch them double back between our legs. We laugh together – real laughs, the ones from the gut. When we’re exhausted from the chase, we flop down on the wet sand, and I know then what I know now: this time together, it won’t last; nothing this good ever does. The turtles march on to the sea, their shells glistening, tiny dots under the moon’s amber light. They go to survive or be eaten, swallowed up in the vastness either way.

I survived.

All these thoughts occur in a moment’s moment, as the feeling of being outside oneself subsides, the trillion-plus qt wave packets settling into their new location, the exchange transition completing its final furious computations before arriving at rest state.

I explore the apartment but already know everything is in its proper place; I know I am when I’m supposed to be. I’ve been here so many times before.

I lock my gaze on the front door. I imagine it opening, Emily flowing through the entrance like life itself. Well, hello there, bro bro! She laughs, squeaking her joy. I rise to meet her—

The door has never opened. Not once.

#

Memory is not always the best guarantee for remembering.

Against the primary wall of the apartment the white leather sofa reigns - the center point of her existence - rumpled on the left side cushion and armrest from overuse. I imagine Emily there, perpetually tanned legs curled under her, engrossed in her tablet, surgically munching on an apple (Honeycrisp most likely). Her nose is narrow and pronounced (a Hurst family trait), her high cheekbones a pair of gauzy ghosts reflecting an ethereal glow from the fading dusk of that fateful day. A few strands of auburn hair protrude from her glodana, the only p-mod I ever remember her allowing herself. I’m certain there is music playing in the background; Emily always reminded me every book needed a soundtrack.

I dream a tear as the image fades.

As always there are pictures behind the sofa, six in total: three stacked on three, mounted in antique-y frames (Sis shied away from v-walls, convinced they were all 2ways). They are always hard to look at for very long because she’s in all of them. Emily was about family, favoring us over friends and acquaintances, even romantic interests. And she favored big brother over everyone; in every image she is always tilted ever so slightly towards me, whether posing with our parents or a rotating menagerie of grandparents, uncles, aunts and pets. We shared everything: every thought, every success, even the downers, regardless of distance.

I had memorized each picture down to the last detail, even the order in which they were placed.

When the real tears come, they always come unabated.

#

I was so very patient, cajoling my PhD advisors Drs. Carla DuPone and Franklin Huerta, especially Huerta. He knew what the limits were or was at least more confident of them than DuPone: the theoretical vs. the hypothetical, what Huerta derisively categorized as “mental masturbation”. DuPone was adamant quantum teleportation was not temporal in and of itself; it wasn’t even teleportation per se. Qt-ing was too big a leap to mass-quantity superposition for Huerta and it was preposterous to suggest there was so-called “time-traveling” mixed up in the equations.

DuPone, on the other hand, conjured up schematics and built an apparatus she claimed might fit the physics, sending Huerta into one of his famous, hand-waving huffs. When I finally screwed up the courage to approach her with my half-baked thesis idea, she babbled on about “don’t go fiddling with the goodies or you’ll end up in braneworld” or some such shit.

But she wouldn’t stop me. In the end, nothing would.

I knew what I had been sent to was something special, unique, a peek into spacetime. A temporal bubble.

I didn’t care. I had to know.

Sis, I can still save you.

#

Something’s wrong.

The pictures; they’re not in the same order. And there’s different faces in each, even subtle shifts in perspective. Unsteady, I fall forward onto the sofa, knocking the pictures loose from the wall. I reach behind the sofa to retrieve them, growing queasier still. Frantically, I shuffle through each frame.

I am missing from them all.

I imagine the wall taunting me: of course, you’re not there. This is not your place, your time, your reality.

There is a creaking to my right. I turn, fall, float, dissolve, decay—

Out of the corner of my fading sight---

The door opens---