Forgiveness across Space and Time

David was organizing term papers in front of him, caffeine in hand, when he saw his wife and daughter cross the campus square toward him. This was strange because they had been dead for nearly a year. David almost spilled his coffee on the term papers, which would have ruined his day, and inconvenienced his twenty-two students, and when he looked up the vision was gone.

Later that day, he sat on a couch belonging to Clarissa M. Lounds, MD, which was embossed onto a framed certificate on the wall behind her head. Clarissa regarded David with large blue eyes through soda-bottle glasses which made her look for all the world like a goldfish.

"Regressing," she said.

"What?"

The therapist took her glasses off and polished them.

"This is new, David. We've made progress over the past ten months, but you have never hallucinated. Are you taking any medication? Drugs?"

"No! Just coffee in the morning and the occasional beer in the evening."

"But you say you saw them?"

The memory of the encounter returned. Abigail's brown eyes searching as she hurried across, wearing a maroon suit. Close behind her was Leah, her jet-black-dyed hair streaming behind her like a pirate flag.

"David?"

David whipped back to reality.

"Obviously, I imagined them. Daydream?"

The therapist pursed her lips, looking even more like a bespectacled fish.

"Perhaps. A tragedy of this magnitude can profoundly impact your perception, especially where suicide is involved. I want you write down these episodes when they happen."

There was more talk about David's mental wellbeing, including the possibility of a "safe environment" for David evoking images of burly men in white carrying straitjackets.

The next day found David only partially present while teaching his morning class. Sadness tugged at him like wet clothing.

"Are you all right, Mr. Rose?" asked the girl in the front row, echoing the puzzled eyes of the class.

David was standing in front of the white board getting ready to write out a table of reasons why Hannibal lost the Battle of Zama, but his eyes were on the campus square outside the window.

"You know what?" he said, putting the pen down. "I'm going to end the class a little early. You know what you need to read. And don't forget, test Friday!"

The class exploded in bustle as the students headed for the door, and David slowly sat down.

A tragedy of this magnitude can have a profound impact... especially where suicide is involved.

A fragment of a nightmare surfaced, born of a real nightmare. A prescription bottle stood empty on the kitchen counter. Words on the label glared mercilessly at him: "Abigail Rose - Zolpidem 10mg." David shook his head, and the fragment blew away.

David had no classes for the rest of the day, so he wandered over to the Penrose Hall, where his "other therapist" taught aspiring astrophysicists. Professor Aryabhata Mehta, PhD was the eye of a mini-storm in the Physics department conference room, where post-grads swirled around him carrying printouts. Arya had his eyes glued to a monitor which showed a graph incomprehensible to David. His mouth held a hint of a grin as he spared glances for the printouts.

It was a full two minutes before Arya noticed David standing at the door. The astrophysicist's excitement was like a neon sign.

"David!" he cried. "You're never going to believe this! It happened!"

"Uh... what happened?" said a confused David.

"A signal!" said Arya. "The biggest gravitational waves in LIGO history! We're gonna need a lot of number crunching, but no doubt it's two supermassive black holes eating each other alive!"

"So, that's what's got you over the moon?"

"The moon? Try over the next galactic supercluster! My postgrads will be busy into next year."

Arya looked into David's eyes, and a familiar look broke through.

"I know that look, David. What's going on?"

David's face managed a smile like breaking glass.

"It's nothing, Arya. I'm thrilled for you, though I probably won't understand any of it."

Arya began leading David toward the door.

"Let's get coffee, my man. I know trouble when I see it, especially from you. I need to take a breather, anyway. Whoo! It's been a madhouse around here."

In the cafeteria, David's nearly full cup of coffee steamed as it cooled while Arya slurped his.

"So, what's going on?" said Arya. "How are you today?"

"I..."

David paused, thinking of Abigail's eyes, searching and not finding.

"I saw them."

"Who?"

"Abigail and Leah. I saw them. Plain as day, crossing campus. Then they up and vanished into thin air."

Arya set his coffee down and eyed David with a look that wavered somewhere between compassion and alarm.

"When?"

"Yesterday. I don't know if I'm going crazy, but I went to Dr. Lounds. She suggested a 'safe environment.' You know me, Arya. I wouldn't do anything like that. I have you as my other therapist."

"I would keep an eye on the meter, David. Has anything else strange happened to you?"

"Not yet."

The two professors sat in silence for a moment as mysteries rose from their coffee cups. Arya had a look in his eyes like what David often saw when one of his students was on the verge of an insight.

"What do you know, Ari?"

There was a long pause, then Arya began talking.

"I saw my father! Yesterday morning outside my house. He was drinking coffee and watching the sun rise. When I went out there, he was gone. I thought I was going crazy!"

"Wait, did he come over from India?"

"No! I called him and confirmed it. He's still in Chennai. I'm sure your therapist told you that trauma can make you see things."

"Yes, but what are the odds of both of us having an episode on the same day?"

Arya stood, abandoning his half-full cup of coffee.

"I need to think on this," he said. "It might have something to do with that gravitational wave."

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

But Arya walked away, lost in lofty clouds of scientific thought.

That evening as David drove home with fried chicken cooling in the passenger seat, he pulled up behind a blue Hyundai Accent at the last stop sign before his street. The Hyundai didn't move. David was about to sound his horn when he saw the cascade of jet-black hair in the driver's seat. Leah used to drive a Hyundai, except hers was red.

The blue Hyundai jerked into motion and made a right turn - toward David's house. Stunned, it took a moment for David to follow. He stamped the accelerator and rounded the corner. The blue car was gone.

David crept along the road until he reached his house, with the weeds overgrowing the lawn. As he sat there trying to make sense of what he had just seen, his phone rang.

"Hey bud! I have a theory for you, but it's really out there," said Arya. "I mean it's not something any theoretical physicist takes seriously but it would explain a lot."

"About my situation?"

"About a lot of things. Strange things that people are seeing... including myself. Ever hear of superstring theory?"

"I've heard it batted around by brainy types like yourself."

"Well, it's an untestable hypothesis, but the idea is that the universe is made up of vibrating strings that... uh... you know, I'm not getting into it now. Suffice to say that each string represents a particle, and the way the string behaves can manifest the fundamental forces."

"Fundamental what?"

"The strong force, the weak... never mind! But another hypothesis that was tacked onto string theory is the idea that the strings run through multiple universes. Think of highways connecting multiple cities."

"You mean multiverse theory?"

"Kind of, but more specific. Multiple universes represent all the possible paths that our universe could have taken at each inflection point. Years ago, my father decided to stay in Chennai, instead of coming to live with me. In another universe, he might have made a different decision."

"This is getting really weird."

"Hear me out. In string theory, the strings determine how the fundamental forces behave, like electromagnetism and gravity. But gravity is different. It's the weakest of the forces. And the multiverse hypothesis proposes that this is because gravitational energy actually propagates across multiple universes using superstrings. This might be what allows one universe to influence another!"

"You've lost me," said David.

"David, my man. We just had the single biggest gravitational event on record! It's possible that these gravitational waves are linking our universes with others. We might be seeing people as they might have been if different decisions had been made! My father might be living with me! And Abigail and Leah...uh...sorry, Dave."

"I get it, Arya. But what is the likelihood of all of this?"

David heard Arya sigh.

"Impossible to say. It's just a crackpot hypothesis. But I can't think of any other way to explain the weird things happening other than mass hysteria. And that's your therapist's lane."

"You're my other therapist, Ari."

An engine revved behind him. He turned, and the red Hyundai was there on the street. He saw jet black hair and a white face, tears glistening in the streetlights.

"No... Leah..."

It was that night all over again. The screaming match. The words released into the world, never to be taken back. David's last glimpse of his daughter before she raced away. A memory made real by forces beyond his understanding. He took a step forward, reaching out, feeling a whole cosmos of surging emotions that he hadn't felt in years and never wanted to again.

The car pulled away from the house and vanished.

"David? Are you there, bud?"

Suddenly numb, David brought the phone to his ear.

"I have to go."

Inside, David found Leah's room. It was undisturbed, a shrine to the departed. But there was a feeling, as if the air was still swirling from someone's passage. Leah's aquarium sat in front of the window. It was dry, the goldfish having died ages ago.

Footsteps echoed from downstairs. David rushed down the staircase and saw her standing with her back to him in the kitchen. Abigail was wearing the same blue dress he had found her in on that terrible day. She had looked almost like she was sleeping then.

Abigail turned and faced him.

"David," she said. "I'm so sorry."

"What do you mean?" he said, even as his mind wrestled with what he was seeing.

He saw the prescription bottle in her hand and froze.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, David. I don't know what's going on, but I think the universe gave me a chance to say that to you and I'm not going to waste it."

David stepped closer and could smell Abigail's scent. Her brown eyes held him. It couldn't be real, yet she was more real than anything in the house.

"Abigail, I was the one who abandoned you after Leah died," he said. "I buried myself in work and left you alone."

Tears spilled from Abigail's eyes, and she held up the pill bottle. It was empty, but he could read the label, the words glaring mercilessly at him:

"David Rose - Zolpidem 10 mg."

"I was so wrapped up in my own pain I didn't see yours," Abigail continued.

David went to Abigail and folded her into an embrace, sharing their warmth across infinite space and time.

"Can you forgive me?" asked Abigail.

"There's nothing for me to forgive. But maybe, we can forgive ourselves."

Abigail pulled back and looked in his eyes, and the bottle clattered to the floor.

"It's enough to know that somehow, somewhere, you are living your life," she said.

"And so is Leah," said David.

Abigail's smile was like the rising sun until the moment she was no longer there.





Word count: 1988