The Absence And Presence Of The Singular

In the haze of the tent she picks her words carefully for me. Slowly they come out, twisting around and around until they settle at a rest on the table between us and I listen, entranced, as she tells me more truth in a heartbeat than I’d heard in a lifetime.

“The universe is a multitude. It is anything but singular. It is a thousand shades of infinite colors and each one represents a copy shifted in a different direction. Each one is only so slightly altered from another, but is a vast expanse from the other across the way.

“What I am saying is that there is no one universe, not in that sense of things. There are infinite different ones with each and every possibility accounted for. In an infinite number of them you were never born. In an infinite number you exist.

“And in so many of these you are the same as you were when you found me.”

“A man?” I asked her, but she laughed and shook her head.

“Unsatisfied.”

I couldn’t deny the truth of that, not really. Waxing poetical about wanting to go back and how this life felt wrong to me, that felt hollow now. Not untrue exactly, but not wholly embracing truth either. It felt like something was missing for me.

I know I was not happy.

“These universes, these different versions. They’re not as disconnected as they might seem at a glance. Travel between them is troubling, but now that you’ve experienced a shift even you must acknowledge that there are commonalities.”

“The people,” I nodded, “The places. The things I knew are still what I knew here.”

She nodded too, “Your friends and your enemies are all the same that you know. Even if the actions they take are different, that doesn’t mean the intention and the thought behind them are not the same. And do you know why that is?”

I shook my head, not certain of anything so why certain of that.

“Because bodies are merely vessels for spirits. And spirits transcend the borders of the universe.”

She spills her cup suddenly but the liquid doesn’t hit the table. It floats in the air, suspended as she twitches her fingers and casts it up into the space between us.

The liquid shifts until it looks like panes of glass all lined up between each other. Small gaps between them that you can glance through and in the middle of all of it a single needlepoint connection. Like a fishing line strung through them all.

The woman waved with her hand and the illusion spun lazily, tilting on a point and letting me see it from all angles.

“Take each pane as a different universe. Take each one as it’s own instance. Take in the sight of the line that runs between them and ask yourself what that is.”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

“You do,” she insisted, “You know because I all but told you. You know because you know it in your heart. You’re just afraid to say it because you know that it will open up the possibilities to uncomfortable truths.”

“I can’t,” I whispered, fear tinting my voice.

“But you must,” she said, “You must know it. You must acknowledge it. You must understand why she was happy when you were not. Why the life she lived didn’t break her as it broke you.”

“It’s me,” I said, “It’s her. The line is us. Our… spirit.”

She leans back and the illusion stops it’s twisting turns, vibrating on a point and sending ripples through the liquid representation.

“Precisely. The connection between all of them is your spirit. One entity embodying an infinite number of lives and in some you are happy and in others you are not but the version of you in all of them is the same. The impetus behind it is all driven from the same heart.

“So why was she happy? Why was he sad?”

“Because…” I swallowed hard, looking through the shimmering illusion at the woman behind it.

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