“It’s called a what, now?”
I still didn’t understand what she’d told me despite the entire knowledge of Ship’s memory banks behind me.
“A Zero Room,” Interface dutifully replied, but I could tell that I was annoying her. I’d taken way too many opportunities to demonstrate my ignorance.
“And no time exists in there?” I just wanted clarification. She didn’t have to give me that nasty glare.
“Neither time nor space,” she stiffly corrected.
I peeked through the doorway. “Looks like an empty room to me.”
“Wait until the door is closed,” she dryly replied.
I didn’t want to pursue the argument any further, so I decided to change the subject slightly. “And that’s going to cure me?”
She closed her eyes, politely holding back every highbrow insult brewing inside her. “It cannot cure you, but it might help to mitigate the damage thus far.”
She had already explained the procedures they’d already done to me until she couldn’t take it anymore, so there was no point in rehashing them. Besides, I still wouldn’t get it. Ship was being pretty stingy with the data bank and wasn’t backing me up, and I was actually rather grateful for that. Apparently, even a fraction of that knowledge was enough to fry my brain to mush within seconds, and I didn’t fancy that as the way I wanted to go.
“By cutting me off from Ship?” I was pretty proud of myself for remembering that much.
She didn’t look impressed, but then, I didn’t think anything would, especially where I was concerned.
“By stemming the flow of information, we hope that your brain’s natural healing processes can work without enduring any further stress,” she explained. “That is, if your brain is capable of healing.”
“What do you mean by that?” I tried not to be offended, but she was being so condescending!
“Other species have remarkable healing capabilities,” she replied. “Your species, however, is remarkably unremarkable. That being said, I doubt that the Zero Room will do you any good, but conversely, it cannot do you any harm, either.”
“So, it’s worth a try,” I finished for her.
“It would also keep you out of the way while the capsule finishes repairs.” She was annoyed that I had interrupted her, and I actually felt bad about it. I was too busy trying to be as smart as her and hadn’t considered her feelings.
“And stop you from pushing buttons willy-nilly,” she politely added out of spite.
I prudently let that go and peeked into the room again. “So, what happens once I’m inside?”
“Nothing,” Interface replied.
“Nothing?” I couldn’t tell if she was kidding; she had a pretty good poker face. “What do you mean, nothing? It must do something!”
“Once the door closes, you will be isolated from all time and space.” She was condescending again. “Without time or space, there can be no cause and effect, and without cause and effect, no events may occur.”
That made sense. I think. “So, nothing happens in there?”
“Correct.” She wasn’t impressed that I understood it on the first try.
“Well,” I had to say it; it was too good to resist. “That’s something.”
“Indeed,” she flatly replied. “Now, if you don’t mind?”
She gestured invitingly towards the doorway, showing no indication that she got the joke, and to be honest, I think I was the only one that did. Taking the loss, I shrugged and stepped through the door, but I paused just inside the room to ask her, “How will I know if it’s working?”
“The ship will monitor your vitals,” she explained. “We will know if it has any effect on your condition.”
“Ah.” I took a step farther into the room and had to pause again to ask, “And how long is this going to take?”
“I do not know,” she bluntly replied. “And we shall never know if we never begin, now, shall we?”
Okay, I rolled my eyes at that one and took another step into the room before I had to pause again. “So, what happens when you shut the door?”
“A very good question,” she said, and Ship closed the door on me.
*********
I wasn’t there when it happened, so I imagine their conversation went something like this.
Ship said, “He’s gone!”
And Interface said, “Who?”
And Ship said, “Pilot! He’s vanished!”
And Interface probably said, “Don’t be stupid. He’s in the Zero Room.”
And Ship probably said, “No! He isn’t!”
And she probably said, “Don’t be silly! The Zero Room just does that!”
And Ship probably said, “No! I would know if he was still there, and he’s not there! He vanished the moment the door closed!”
And she probably said something like, “Well, good riddance.”
But I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there. Instead, I was in an office staring at myself sitting at a desk. Or rather, I was sitting at my desk trying to overcome writer’s block when I looked up and saw myself standing in the doorway. But I was just in the Zero Room not even a second ago! And suddenly, there I was, seeing myself standing in the doorway, rising to my feet from behind the desk, in utter shock, and thinking in stereo.
“What’s going on here?” I muttered in unison with my doppelganger. I felt their confusion as if it was my own.
“How’d you do that?” My demand was instantly echoed by them, again in perfect unison. And again, I felt their confusion, as well as their frustration at seeing and hearing someone that looked and sounded exactly like me speaking at the exact same moment that I did, in the same tone, with the same words, and I instantly knew who they were, remembering their life as well as mine, and it just wasn’t right.
“Stop that!” But they didn’t. They were just as annoyed as I was, and growing just as frustrated. “I said stop it! Stop it right now!
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” At least we agreed on that, as if we could disagree. I figured it out right away, and so did they.
“We were just in the Zero Room,” we said in stereo. “Something must have gone wrong!
“Stop copying me!” It was really pissing me off. They could at least have the courtesy to allow me to speak for myself!
“What is going on here?”
I turned around to the sound of her voice and looked past my double. She was standing right behind me and as soon as she saw me, her face paled, but she held it together. She’d kept her composure through months of physicals and therapy to get over my delusion of another life, so something like a doppelganger wasn’t going to derail her, either. But she was shocked and hustled past doorway me to desk me’s side.
“What’s happening?” Her voice was trembling, and when I held her, the rest of her was too. “Who is that? Why does he look and sound like you?”
“He thinks like me, too.” Okay, maybe that was too much information, because her face grew even paler and she glanced fearfully between us. Being a new time traveler, I had a theory, one that other me instantly shared. “I think he’s me, but from another time and place.”
She glanced between us, then asked desk me, “Why is he doing that?”
“Somehow, we share the same mind.” Speaking in unison was getting really old really fast, but I couldn’t think of any way to prevent it. He couldn’t either. But there wasn’t time to figure it out yet, because we’d made her even more uneasy, and we had to make things right again. If that was even possible anymore. “I don’t know how, but I know everything about him, and he knows everything about me. We’re the same person.”
“Okay!” She was finally fed up and decided to take charge before things got weirder. “That’s enough of that! One at a time, starting with you!”
She pointed at me. Doorway me, that is. Even I was getting confused.
“Where did you come from?” It was a fair question. She always knew how to get to the point. “And how soon are you leaving?”
I… doorway me… wasn’t sure what to say, but I knew that she wouldn’t let me beat around the bush, so I told her about the Zero Room and that it was supposed to be therapeutic and topped it off with an apology. “I don’t know what happened or how I got here, but believe me, it was an accident. I never meant to come here…”
“… wherever here is.” I looked around. It was the office of my dreams, and it was almost impossible to sort the memory of putting it together from the memory of Ship and Interface. I saw that my doppelganger was looking around the room with just as much envy, even though it was their workplace. Things were just too weird for words.
“Earth.” I, doorway me, knew it already, but I had to say it to cement it in reality. “The United States. It even looks like my apartment… sort of.”
“It is.” Desk me was getting territorial, and I didn’t blame them. I remembered the morning that I woke up next to her with a completely different set of memories from hers, and now, there was a third reality intruding upon me. Them. Whatever. The point was, it was getting to be too much to take.
“A third reality!” We both exclaimed it the instant it hit us. It was so obvious that I don’t know why I didn’t suspect it sooner.
We spooked her, though. She jumped and demanded, “What was that about?”
“Time or realities are folding over each other!” Okay, we hardly knew what we were talking about, but it sounded good. “I must have jumped from one reality to another! That’s why I didn’t remember my life in this reality!”
My excitement died pretty quickly, though, when I hit the wall of ignorance. “But I don’t know why the Zero Room sent me here. I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way.”
“Wait!” She was pretty apprehensive about my explanation, even given that it was delivered in stereo. She was pretty wary of doorway me altogether and clutched my arm protectively. “What are you saying? That my husband is from another reality, and that all those tests and sessions were for nothing?”
If there was one thing that I loved about her, it was that she always kept an open mind about things. But I didn’t expect it to remain open for very long, given the circumstances. I decided that desk me would put an arm around her while doorway me blathered like an idiot.
“I’m guessing that Ship and Interface have already figured all this out by now and that they’re working on getting me back.” I tried to sound reassuring, but I had no proof that what I said was anywhere near the truth. For all I knew, Interface was happy to get rid of me. It was what she’d wanted from the moment that we met. Ship, on the other hand, might miss me. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stand to see her in distress. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“It better be soon.” She didn’t mince words, and I didn’t blame her. This thinking and speaking in stereo was getting overwhelming. Then, her brows knit in deep thought and she said, “This isn’t a Time cop thing where you two can’t make contact with each other or you turn into goo and disappear, is it?”
“I don’t know!” The idea shocked us both. We eyed each other carefully, thinking the same thing. “But maybe we’ll just keep our distance, just in case!”
