Inside I find a pleasantness I’ve always suspected encompassed the rooms within. Through the tiny foyer an equally satisfying warmth waits. The furnishings are a study in simplicity; a small two-place dining table replete with a bouquet of wildflowers I can not name. A pot of tea percolating noisily on the immaculate stove; still-life photographs gracing the areas above the cabinets, stretching the length of the kitchen.
My mother lets go of my shaking hand and walks over, soundlessly, to tend the steaming kettle. I sit down at the small table then as if I’ve done that very thing every day of my life. The kettle whistles sharply and my mother removes it from the burner, sets it carefully down on the waiting pot holder near the sugar. With a delicateness lost to memory she measures out a portion in two glasses, and sets the kettle back on the stove.
“You’ll have some tea,” she says, never looking up.
“Okay,” I manage, lost in the swarm of questions marauding through my brain. She brings the cups over and sits down across from me. After two tremulous sips I’m able to meet her patiently waiting gaze. I can no more hide the anxiety behind my eyes than pluck them out and be done with the whole thing. “Mother,” I say, surprised how easily the word slips from my tongue. “What is this place?”
She merely looks on and takes another tentative sip. Then she sets the cup down and smiles across the space. Her mouth just turns up slightly in a way I have no right in remembering, but the chord is struck nonetheless. “Your face is more your father’s than mine,” she admits, ignoring my question.
I shrug, feint a glance into my own steaming cup.
“He was wrong, you know?” she continues. “God knows it was not his fault, but he was wrong.”
“About what?” I whisper, already half afraid of her reply.
“That he was the one,” she answers quietly. Then she pauses and drinks deeply, finishing off her cup. When she smiles, broadly this time, the subsequent rush of memory makes me light-headed, forces my glaze to the stark white table cloth my fingers paw at absently. She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “Your grandmother never allowed herself that much, and I never forced the issue.”
I look her in the eyes, unable to speak.
“People have a need to place blame when things go wrong; perhaps even a right. I never had the courage to challenge her anger at him,” she says, unblinking.
“What was she wrong about?”
“The reasons he left. It had nothing to do with you or me, but I never knew the truth myself. Not then…” she adds ominously.
I find the strength to squeeze her hand. “Tell me,” I plead. With her free hand she pushes the cup away, touches a finger to her lips again, and steels her eyes upon me. “He believed himself the trigger when all along it was you. It always has been you…” and her eyes dance with a fierce light.
“Your father was not a deserter; he did what he felt he had to do, and even if his timing was off, his intentions were true. He just didn’t know it was you the gods proclaimed. Sometimes I try to believe he was only trying to take the cup from your lips. But perhaps I indulge this fantasy only from the fact that I never had the opportunity to question him myself. Opportunity is as hard to find here as anywhere else.”
“Where is here?” I ask her, trembling.
Again the relaxing smile. “Where we all end up,” she says simply.
I shake my head at this mystery. Tired of her riddles I decide to try my own. “There was a dream I had as a kid. So strong it crossed over into adulthood. And I know now, as I suspected for a while, that it was a vision of my father’s death. A little boy jumped out into the highway. He was chasing a grasshopper and my father ran off the road to avoid running him down. The truck went up in a ball of flames. And the little boy turned out to be the one who eventually killed me.”
So, there it is. On the table.
For the first time, the smile leaves my mother’s face, and it is also at this moment I notice something behind her eyes I’ve missed in the paroxysm of joy I’ve felt at actually seeing her after believing her gone for so long. Another presence seems to wait there, but its hold is either so cloaked or tenuous that I can grasp nothing else about either its form or identity. I let go of her hand.
“Who are you?” I ask, surprised at the sudden violence in my voice.
Her eyes widen momentarily and then soften. “There are things you have to be made aware of,” she says. “You were, are, different from every other you have ever known. You are a trigger, this great prize in the Universe. In all of them.” I open my mouth to speak, but she hushes me with a wag of her forefinger. “Listen, son, and I’ll tell you your legacy.
“There are moments in history that require a spark, a means of moving action from one plane to another. The Chinese have a name for such a thing: the Yin and Yang. Good and Evil. This is not a quality restricted to Earth. These are the necessary elements that enable, propel, this universe and all others through their paces. As there can be no up without down, there also can be no good without evil. Outcomes, however, are dependant upon what proportions manage to assert themselves over all other possibilities. These proportions are dependant upon creatures like you: catalysts. Your actions, or lack thereof, enable cycles to continue and change. Or cease.”
I listen with mouth agape, fully aware now of the living being within my mother’s form asserting itself.
“In all systems,” it goes on, “there are Reality Shifters, ones born to shape coming global identities. Powerful religious figures, politicians, musicians, writers, scientists. But as I said before, there are always two sides. Two possibilities.” The creature’s voice has changed now, although its body still holds the shape of my mother. Its finger comes up and taps her temple. “You must excuse me, forgive me, please. There are many other worlds and it’s not often easy to combine flawlessly. It has been ages since I worked with only six senses; I’m far more proficient with twenty or thirty. But,” and the creature smiles, nothing like my mother now, “one must work with what one has.”
I can no longer hold back and point my finger. “You! You were the one in my room that night! The one with the changing clothes, the costumes. You’ve always watched me.”
The smile, though alien, is not menacing. “Not me, Jesse Avery, but one like me. We all have our parts in the Unending Drama.” The creature pauses as if waiting for me to say something else, and when I don’t it continues. It rubs my mother’s hands together above the table cloth. “Maybe an illustration will help,” it offers.
“Your grandmother was a Christian and she passed her beliefs on to you, only of course, you assimilated them differently than she did. Regardless, Christ was one of these Epoch Shifters, one of the greatest in sheer effect than many others from countless worlds. But His fate was not pre-ordained in the Unending Drama; it was hinted at, of course, but free will is a constant. Everywhere that beings hold sentience the Yin and Yang have a…moral responsibility to unfold on their own. The pathways have already been seen and charted out but the outcome remains untold.
“Here is something else. There was a Roman soldier who held up a sponge of poisoned vinegar which Christ, in his agony, was forced to drink. The soldier was a counterpart to your own Aldo Sautin. The evil half of the plan to silence the Great Teacher’s lesson. The lowly perfumist, Nicodemus, luckily was able to muster the strength and will to undo and set into action the other side of the coin, and therefore the fledgling religion was given the impetus it required to grow.”
“But what has any of that got to do with me!” I shout. “If I’m dead now, I’m not capable of doing anything!”
“Oh, I must interject, you do. You must not forget your chemistry. In chemical reactions the catalyst is always used up. It is the girl, this Annie, who will be the next great Epoch Shifter, and your action alone has saved her from the fate Sautin had planned. Interestingly enough, I have found that many times the positive course has a seemingly disproportionate chance of turning up victorious, but n
ot always. Your great monster of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, would have had much less effect on fanatics and radicals alike if his mistress had not killed him and staged the farce that made him a martyr in many eyes thereafter.” The creature smiles. “What is your saying: the roll of the dice?”
I shake my head and try to control my frantic breath. The things the alien says bounce around my head like a pinball gone crazy. I study the lines in my knuckles and spread out my hands on the table top. “So it’s all a great crapshoot, is that what you’re telling me? There are these people, these Epoch Shifters, who are beset on all sides by ones like myself. These catalysts, as you call them. And even so, there are no guarantees of outcome, only endless possibilities dependant upon random actions of good and evil?” I pause to let what I’ve said sink in. If for no one else, for me.
The creature smiles and nods my mother’s head. “That’s not all of it, of course, but it’s close enough. In the coming ages things usually tend to straighten themselves out along the pathways of new immortals. Because don’t forget: as of this moment you are a fresh, newborn babe to this Other Place.”
“This Other Place,” I whisper, shaking my head. “Then why are we sitting in my neighbor’s kitchen, discussing the mechanisms of the Universe over cups of tea?”
This time the smile is genuinely my mother’s. The realization blooms in me like a new species of flower pushing its face up from rich, fecund soil to a brilliantly warm flash of light from above. “Well why not, after all? This is the place you looked upon fondly, the place where you watched the old couple and wished your own life could have been different, more pleasant. This has been a place of comfort for you, regardless of whether you’ve actually known it or not.”
“I don’t know…it’s too much. What you’ve told me. It’s just too much. I’m not sure…how to finish, what to do.”
The creature smiles again. “There is nothing left to do. Your performance was extraordinary and now the girl will accomplish whatever it is her own strength and vision will bring."
I feel the tear slide from my eye, but make no move to stop it. I hold up my hands, palms out. “And now?” I ask.
The creature reaches across the table and grabs my hands in its own. I feel its warmth of kindness, watch as my mother’s eyes soften even more. “That remains to be seen. There are too many other worlds and situations left unresolved as of yet. Only,” and it barks a short burst of laughter before finishing, “time will tell.”
I nod mutely and stand up, still holding hands with this messenger in my mother’s form. Some secret imperative passes between us and we move away from the table. The messenger lets go of my hands and gestures toward the door. “Shall we go?” it asks.
I nod my assent and follow it to the door.
the end
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