A/N: This is... a weird plot bunny that attacked me one night after watching too many Japanese horror clips. Although I think I know what's going on here, I'm also aware that there are probably half a dozen possible explanations that all make sense. Oh and all the (pseudo)science here is made up, so don't attack me for the theories that don't work alright?
Disclaimer: Skins ain't mine, we all know that.
The door crashed open. James Cook stood in the doorway, an evil grin spreading slowly from ear to ear. Thunder and Emily's screams filled the air.
He shut the door slowly and leaned is back on it. "My wife," he smirked. "My lover. You killed me. But I can't be killed."
He sauntered menacingly towards the sofa Emily was seated, trying desperately to dodge around him. "Do you want to know why? Love, you see, has made me immortal."
He grabbed one slender wrist and with a burst of strength, tugged her up to her feet and to the front of the room. Her feet tripped over a fallen pillow and she stumbled. Cook caught her in his arms, holding her there, his terrifying smile not inches from her face.
With another push he had pinned her to the bookcase with his body and pulled a knife out of his coat pocket. Regarding it fondly, he stepped back so abruptly she nearly fell over again. Emily looked up only to find the knife's handle being offered to her. She glanced at his face in confusion, only to have the blade thrust into her hands and Cook stepping away yet again.
He spread his arms out. "Kill me, again, love. Put it right in here." He pointed to the middle of his chest. "Because every time you kill me, love, my love is born again." He chuckled and took her, knife and all, into his arms.
"Cook you idiot!" rang out a voice from the depths of the darkness, as did heavy footsteps. The distinct face of one furious Katie Fitch appeared out of nowhere and glared up at them. "How many times do I have to tell you that you have to complete the whole monologue before you hug and go all dead again? And get your dirty hands off of my gay baby sister."
Cook gave a good-natured grin downwards. "You don't mind, do ya Emilio?" his broad accent gleefully breaking through.
Emily pushed him away and grimaced. "Jesus, Cook, could you please get that coat washed before premiere night which is two days from now? It stinks like you've – well, you've already been rolling around in it every day for a month."
"Unmistakable scent of Cookie," he laughed, as Katie took her seat again in the middle of the third row.
"From the action scene, made me immortal yadda yadda," she ordered in her bossiest tone.
Emily had barely returned to the sofa when the door to the theater creaked open and light flooded in. The profile of the chorus conductor crossed his arms.
"Katie, you promised you'd have the stage cleared by five," Thomas called.
Katie scrambled to her feet. "Fuck me, is it that late already? Kill the lights and put this shit away people."
.
Emily walked down the already dark street, shivering slightly. The sun went down really early this time of year, and it smelled like rain.
She noticed a couple sitting on a bench, half hidden by bushes and judging from the back of their heads, locked in a very passionate kiss.
"Was that real enough for you?" asked a female voice.
Another female voice chuckled. "Babe, you're everything."
"But am I enough?"
"Why wouldn't you be?"
Ah, she thought to herself. Love. It was what the play was about, how love always starts out all warm and fluffy and eventually can twist into something that's anything but. Throw in a dash of the supernatural and you get a nice creepy play production.
Emily went over some of her lines in her head. Katie wrote the whole thing and directed it, she'd never thought she would admit it but she now thinks her sister is a genius at the scary. The play was set in the 19th century, about a woman who marries a man, goes to his estate, has doubts, and kills him by accident. The husband then comes back from the dead and haunts her to suicide, where it's revealed to the audience that it was all her guilt driving her mad.
A bit of a tired plot, though as Katie liked to say, the devil is always in the execution. She found her face smiling despite the chilly winds whistling through the trees. My sister, the genius. She was going to knock the socks off the audience.
"Was that real enough for you?" asked a voice in the bushes.
Emily froze. Déjà vu? she thought.
"Babe, you're everything."
Emily spun around in bewilderment.
"But am I enough?"
"Why wouldn't you be?"
That had happened before, hadn't it? Suddenly she had no idea where she was, or how far from her place. Everything looked the same, yet everything was looked so unfamiliar. Hadn't she been walking a lot longer than usual today?
The bushes rustled and the couple left. Emily blinked several times. Reality dripped back slowly, filling her mind bit by bit.
My name is Emily Fitch, she told herself. I live down this road. I study performing arts. Now get your sorry arse home, more rehearsal tomorrow.
.
Emily Fitch lived in one of those houses with several bedrooms and a shared living room and kitchen. Five other girls lived in this particular house, mostly boring, except for one Effy Stonem, who studied history.
Effy was buttering a slice of toast as Emily came down the stairs the next morning, bleary-eyed and mostly still asleep.
"In 2007," Effy began, "a schizophrenic German teenager killed his roommate by accident and ate his brains the next day." Emily yawned and poured herself a cup of coffee. "I wonder how he cooked it, or if he cooked it at all. The records don't say."
"Maybe he spread them on bread," Emily replied as she sat across of Effy. "You spout random facts about killing people every morning. If you're so interested in psychopaths, you should've majored in psychology. They probably have more detailed records."
Effy put down the butter knife with a smirk. "Nah, I like the figures and the deeds, not the reasons behind them."
"You mean you just like to watch the bodies pile up."
"You could say that. But psych majors mostly turn out like JJ."
"Who's JJ?"
"You've never heard of JJ? Supposedly some boy genius that remembers everything he ever reads and is, quote, 'on the cusp of setting up an exciting new branch of psychological theory'."
"Huh. At our uni?"
"Yeah, he's studying for his second doctorate."
Emily opened her mouth, then shut it again. The strange occurrence the night before was still nagging her. Yet it felt ridiculous to talk about it.
"Eff?" she asked warily.
"Yes?"
"Yesterday I had this strange moment when I couldn't remember who or where I was, and time seemed a lot slower than normal. Does that ever happen to you?"
Emily watched as Effy plunged the knife into the butter with seemingly a lot more force than necessary, and started on her second slice. "We're all acting our lives out, we're bound to forget our lines some of the time. But the time thing, maybe you should talk to this girl I met the other day, some Naomi. She had lots of really radical theories."
.
Room 211 was labeled "Theoretical Physics". Emily knocked.
"It's open," said a voice.
It was the basic classroom, rows of seats and whiteboards on all the walls. There were two windows facing the football field, and the windowsills were piled with books. A girl was sitting in the middle of the room, on a desk, spinning a pen in one hand and running the other through her peroxide blonde hair.
Piercing blue eyes turned towards her. "What?" their owner asked.
Emily swallowed in shock as she took in the room. The whiteboards were packed with equations and strange-looking geometric figures. Question marks popped up often. There was one place where an especially annoying problem was being tackled, and the girl had lost her patience half a dozen calculations in and written in bold letters, "SHIT".
"Can I help you?"
Emily's eyes turned back to the girl, Naomi was her name, who was still staring at her in irritation.
"My friend Effy said I could find you here?"
"Effy," Naomi squinted. "Skinny brunette from London, I-know-all-your-darkest-secrets look?"
"That's the one."
"She had some radical theories."
"Funny, she said the same thing about you."
Naomi dropped the pen and hopped off the table. "OK then friend of Effy's, what can I do for you? As you can see, the only thing here is theories."
"My name is Emily, and that's all I need. A theory to explain something."
They sat down, and Emily started talking. Once she was done and felt like a thorough twat, Naomi thought about it.
"Well," she said finally. "There's a lot of crazy maths going through my head right now so stop me if I'm getting too complicated and hard to understand. Could you wipe that board for me? The one that's -"
"Shit. I know, I can read."
Naomi grinned. Emily wiped.
"Do you know the theory with Schrodinger's cat?" Naomi began.
"For everything that happens differently, a separate universe is created?"
She scratched her head. "Well, that's one of the implications. The theory itself is straightforward enough, but the interesting thing is that it's about superposition. Do you know what that is?"
"Something about a particle being everywhere at once until somebody looks at it?"
"Er, yeah. To be precise, before being observed, subatomic particles exist in every possible state as a probability. In other words, it's all the places it could be until, like you said, somebody looks at it. Then, it acquires a fixed location."
"So if nobody is looking at me, I'm everywhere I could possibly be at the same time?"
"Well, that could be possible if you had no consciousness, since your conscious mind is constantly observing you and your environment."
"Doesn't that come down to the tree in the forest question?" Emily asked as she finished wiping clean the last bit of "SHIT".
"Not like that. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears anything, the falling still has physical implications, such as causing waves to travel through the air so yes it still makes a sound. But it's a paradox, don't you see? As a molecule, you could be anywhere, but that basically means that you're nowhere. You have no finite place in the universe."
"Theory understood. What does this have to do with me?"
Naomi rubbed her palms together in a "this is getting good" kind of way. "Have you heard about branes?"
"Effy talked about some boy eating them this morning."
"Not that kind," she grimaced. "Membranes, branes for short. They vibrate through a bunch of dimensions creating particles."
Emily looked completely confused.
"Look," Naomi hopped off the desk and started drawing. "Branes. You can think of them as bunches strings that extend through lots of dimensions. You know about the four-dimensional space-time thing?"
Emily nodded.
"Well, let's just say that the universe has a lot more than 4 dimensions. So these string things extend through them, and when they vibrate, particles are created, like a note in the air when a guitar string vibrates. Most strings make loops, and give way to well-contained universes where everything behaves according to three-dimensional logic."
"Most?"
"There's this thing called a p-brane. It's kinda like a black hole, and marks where strings end in the super dimensiony thing… that you don't understand." Naomi chuckled nervously. "I dunno why, I keep forgetting you don't spend most of your time thinking about this shit."
"It's not shit," Emily protested. "Things don't exist until observed, strings make the world from lots of dimensions. I'm kinda waiting for the point here."
Naomi continued scribbling. "Branes are basically just a bunch of strings grouped together. You know what a black hole is?" Emily nodded. "Right. So black holes are made out of really long strings, and theoretically they aren't possible unless strings and branes interact with each other. Eh, it'll take forever to explain why, so you should just take that for granted… Back to your experience. The time thing is the easy part. Black holes produce a lot of gravity and this affects time – you know this right?"
From the depths of a nearly forgotten teenage fascination with general relativity Emily dug up the dregs of something about space time curvature. "I think it was something about lots of gravity equals faster speed equals slower time or something?"
Naomi beamed approvingly. "And that's why your walk yesterday seemed to take longer than usual."
Emily raised an eyebrow. "Because I ran into a black hole?"
Naomi squeezed her eyes shut for a second. "Sorry, forgot to explain that part. Nobody has proved it yet, but I believe that when a p-brane interacts with the string of a black hole, the fabric of space-time in nearby universes are affected. If we actually ran into a black hole in this universe, we'd be dead. Our time would be going so slowly we'd be frozen in time, but the thing with you is the other way around. Don't you see? We're closing in on an interaction."
"Then," Emily shuffled in her chair. "What about the couple in the bushes?"
"Nuther dimension," Naomi mumbled.
"WHAT?"
"Shhhh. I'll probably fail any and all finals if anybody heard me say that. Come here." Naomi sat down next to Emily and whispered in her ear. "I think they're bleeding over from another dimension. Because of all the energy caused by the interaction. More than one universe is being affected by this."
The two of them sat next to each other, Emily's head still spinning and Naomi lost in thought.
"What's going to happen now?" asked Emily finally.
Naomi shrugged. "I don't know. String theory was only developed like 10, 15 years ago, so if this has ever happened before, and that's a really big if, I don't think anyone documented it."
"Hazard a guess then?"
"Could be a big-arsed pile of nothing. But it also could be the start of something big."
"Stop avoiding the question, Naomi. How big are we talking about?"
Naomi rubbed the torn knee of her jeans. "World-altering, apocalypse-y big. I'll have to do some calculations to be sure. Can I have your number?"
"What?" Emily suddenly found herself blushing.
"So I can text you if the apocalypse comes."
"I'll be in the theater all afternoon, you can find me there." Emily paused. "I'll give you my number anyway though."
.
Emily found it rather difficult to wrap her head around the idea, but by the time the others had finished fucking about in the only scene without her and Katie had finished throwing her fit, Emily found the notion a lot easier to stomach. It was much easier, she decided, to accept that the fabric of the universe was bending than the alternative, which she refused even to think about.
It was nearly 5 again when Katie clapped her hands and told them to go through the stabbing scene again.
"My wife," Cook began. "My lover. You killed me. But I can't be killed. Do you want to know why? Love, you see, has made me immortal."
He grabbed her and Emily was careful to stumble and not fall when she tripped, she'd landed on her face, twice, the first week they were rehearsing and it was not pretty. She was really not looking for a bruised chin and sore cheek on show nights.
Cook gave her the knife and struck what he'd started to call his JFC pose, as in Jesus Fucking Christ. "Kill me, again, love. Put it right in here. Because every time you kill me, my love is born again." He took a deep breath and launched into his page-long speech that took him a whole week to memorize. Emily knew she was supposed to be listening, reacting, giving him feedback, because that's what a good actor does, but she found herself being sucked into his words.
"Do you want to run?" he sneered. "Run all you want. The world is out there for you to escape into. But I'll always be right with you, watching you the same that you'll always be watching yourself."
That sounded strangely familiar. Shouldn't she be afraid of him? Shouldn't he be dead? She looked down at the gleaming blade in her shaking hands.
Cook took her wrist again and pointed the sharp end of the knife at himself. "You know you want to, love. Why don't you? Afraid you'll miss me?"
Emily was snapped out of whatever trance-like state she was in when the door behind the audience was opened and a ray of light fell on her face.
"Katie," said Thomas. "Do I have to remind you every time?"
Emily dropped the knife, which fell onto the stage with a clang, and sank to her knees at the edge of the stage. Katie walked over.
"That was good, Ems, different, but good."
Emily looked at her blankly.
"Wow, you've really gone and done it this time haven't you?" Katie grinned. "But you're still going to have to help clean up."
.
It was dark again as Emily walked down the tree-lined street home. She shoved her hands into her pockets, watching her white breath disappear into the air, and snuggled into her jacket. It didn't really help.
"Emily!" a voice called.
She spun around. Naomi materialized from the side of the road, bouncing around to keep warm. "Hey," Emily said awkwardly.
"Hey," Naomi replied equally nervously.
"How was rehearsal?"
"It was… rehearsal. I got lost in the character for a second though, must mean I'm getting better at this stuff. And Katie threw a tantrum, though that's nothing new."
Naomi followed Emily as she turned for home. "Katie's your sister, right?"
"Yeah, she's director. What were you doing?"
"I was waiting for you."
"You were?" Emily paused. "And now you're following me home. Should I be worried?"
"What?" Naomi floundered for a second before remembering what she was there for. "No, there was just… something I wanted to talk to you about. Y'know, in person."
"About your calculations?" Naomi blinked in confusion. "About the end of the world as we know it? We, er, talked about it this morning."
"Oh. Duh. Well, I did them, and they didn't really tell me anything. There are several ways we could predict if and when it'll end this universe but all of them involve taking measurements outside our space-time and observations on the branes themselves, and now I'm boring you to death."
"Huh? Oh, not… er, really."
"So basically what I'm saying is that we can't tell. We're just sitting ducks and have no say on what fate decides to do to us."
"Oh."
A long silence. The only thing Emily could hear was the wind, their crunchy footsteps, and their huffy breathing.
"Can I talk to you about something Emily?"
"Shoot me."
Naomi hesitated, fiddling a bit with her backpack. She squeezed her eyes together and seemed to come to a difficult decision. "I dropped in your rehearsal today."
"You thought it was bad, didn't you?"
"No! No, nothing like that. You were good. The problem was," Naomi stopped moving forward, forcing Emily to stop as well, turn around and look at her. "The problem was, you were the only one there."
Emily was stunned. That couldn't be right.
"You were alone, in the theater," Naomi continued. "And you were talking to people who weren't there. And at five –"
"Thomas?" Emily asked in horror.
"The choir guy? He called you Katie."
Emily swayed. "That's not… possible," she muttered, more to herself than Naomi.
"Do you want to sit down?" Naomi asked, shivering.
Emily gulped down on the massive knot in her throat, turned abruptly and kept walking. Naomi scrambled to keep up. "Go on," Emily said tightly.
"So I broke into the office where the student records are held –"
"You what?"
"What's so weird about that? I've done it a million times before." Emily raised an eyebrow and decided not to pursue the subject. Naomi sighed. "Anyway, I checked your records and found out that Katie is your twin sister who doesn't actually attend this university. And the theater you've been using? It's supposed to be 'unoccupied' over winter break."
Emily's door appeared at the end of the road. "You think I'm completely mental then," she said, as she fished around her pockets for the key.
"That's the thing," replied Naomi quietly. "I don't."
"I talk to people who aren't there and you think I'm not completely crazy? What the fuck are you on?"
Naomi raised her hands as a show of innocence. "Hey, I'm just telling it as I saw it, alright?"
Emily took a long breath. Naomi was right, getting all defensive wasn't going to provide any answers. "Am I the only one here that thinks this is weird?"
"Nuh uh."
"You wanna come in? It's fucking freezing out here."
"Really?"
Emily glared at her. "Either you come in and talk to me about this shit or we both freeze to death and start living with the mammoths tomorrow morning."
"OK."
Naomi only relaxed slightly after they were sitting safely in Emily's room with cups of tea. "I've got a theory," she finally said, after taking a sip.
"I thought that was the only thing you had."
Naomi rolled her eyes. "This is a bit beyond my expertise. But besides the possibility that you're completely mental, I found a alternative explanation for... you know."
"I'm listening."
"I think that our reality, the world we live in, possibly was changed when all this interdimensional dancing around began. And I think it may have begun far before anyone noticed. Have you heard of the butterfly effect?"
Emily nodded. "Yeah, something very small and very random could cause huge changes."
"Well, that theory is based on the chaos theory. In that theory, there's this thing called a dynamical system, which in this case is our universe. Well, in a dynamical system, the smallest changes could cause major outcomes. An atom here, an electromagnetic wave there, and anywhere in the universe, not just on Earth, could have lots of repercussions."
Naomi uncrossed and recrossed her legs, sinking further into Emily's plump couch. "The two people you heard talking yesterday, if they were indeed interference from another universe, that's gigantic on chaotic scales. My hypothesis is that, the interaction of the branes that are causing all this weird phenomenon around you, started long before they could be detected, and has changed the reality of this universe."
"And how does that make me talk to people who aren't there?"
"That's where I'm no expert in, but the theory is that since the particles didn't necessarily land in this part of time, they've, in effect, changed the past. But in our brains, the past is fixed. Which, in turn…"
"Causes the reality my brain perceives to differ from reality as it has become now?"
Emily drank the rest of her tea in silence. Outside, it began to rain.
.
Emily went down the stairs and sat down sullenly at the table. Behind her, Naomi followed, looking utterly uncomfortable in one of Emily's oversized shirts.
Effy was solemnly peeling an apple. She looked up with a smirk. "That's what I call efficiency Ems."
Emily glared at Effy best she could with her eyes half closed. "I would've liked to see you walking to the other side of campus without drowning last night."
Effy smiled, ditched the peel and stabbed the apple enthusiastically with the knife. "In 19th century Boston, an old man killed a dozen children over the course of ten years. He thought that if what he was doing was wrong, God would send an angel to stop him."
Naomi opened her mouth.
"Yes, she's always like this," Emily said, diving face first into her coffee.
Naomi picked up a slice of bread, nicked Effy's knife and plunged it into the chocolate spread on the table. "What would you do if you kept seeing people who aren't there, Effy?"
Effy seemed to think about it as she chewed loudly on her apple. "I'd punch them to see how they react, and then I'd go talk to JJ."
"See?" Naomi shot a glance at Emily. "I told you."
"You're seeing people who aren't there?" asked Effy, suddenly looking much more interested.
.
JJ didn't look like a genius, Emily thought. In fact, he didn't look like much at all. He looked like an ordinary boy, with watches on both wrists and hand-painted sneakers.
"I'm seeing people who aren't there," said Emily. By now, she'd said it so many times it had lost its meaning and was just a sentence.
"Schizophrenia," replied JJ curtly, not looking up from his heavy book, which Emily was sure could flatten a skull if it tried really hard. "Try perphenazine."
Naomi rolled her eyes and pointed to Emily with her thumb. "Does she look schizophrenic to you? Jay, I know you're swamped but can you please get your head out of your arse for a few minutes and act human for a change?"
He huffed, shut his book and looked at Emily. "What's two plus five?" he asked.
"Seven."
"When was the last time you showered?"
"This morning, why?"
"Are you a divine being?"
"No, of course not."
"Am I?"
"Should you be?"
"No, not schizophrenic then," he told Naomi, then looked back at Emily as if seeing her for the first time. "Interesting."
"If something happened that the brain couldn't explain," said Naomi. "What would it do?"
"One of two things – brick it up and forget about it, or find a way to keep functioning by working around the issue."
"Around how?" Naomi persisted.
"It could change the instances that the situation arises, or change the situation itself."
"English, Jay? For those of us who don't spend our days staring at our own brain."
"Could we get some mango juice and sit by the canal? I'm a better speaker when I'm not in this room. I've been told that I talk like a book when I'm surrounded by them."
"More so than usual?"
"That seems to be the case."
.
"You're telling me that our reality is being changed because rogue, otherworldly particles are creating glitches in the fabric of our existence?"
"Thank you."
Emily thought that JJ caught onto the technicalities of Naomi's theory much faster than she had – however, it somehow took her longer to explain it to him.
"So is it possible?" Emily asked when she finally felt it was safe for her to speak up. "If, like Naomi said, the world changed and I didn't, would it be possible for my brain to make up the pieces it found missing?"
"Oh completely possible," JJ replied with quite a lot of conviction. "Brains are naturally engineered to make sense of their surroundings, and if things don't make sense, they find ways to apply logic to it. Or else their underlying structures would collapse, possibly leading to mental breakdown or delusions."
"So it would be able to create a bunch of people, out of pure memory, that talk to me, that I can touch and they can pull me around?"
"Yes. There was this one experiment where people were blindfolded and led to believe that their fingers would be dipped in hot water, when they would actually be putting their hands into room temperature water. Many of them felt heat and pain, and the anticipation alone was even strong enough to create actual redness and scalding on the skin for some of them."
"Wow."
"So I guess that it's the idea of being touched, and pulled around, that your body is reacting to."
"Power of the mind and such."
"Exactly."
"Then how am I supposed to tell apart what's real and what's not? And if the world doesn't come to an end, will this ever stop?"
JJ shrugged. The three of them sat in silence and looked out at the river.
Emily pointed to a boat gliding by. "That's there isn't it?"
The other two nodded. "Very there," Naomi added.
"You know," JJ suddenly said, "if I were one of those touchy feely psychologists, I'd say there's something that needs to be done before these hallucinations stop."
"And you aren't." Emily didn't mean it to be a question.
"Nope," Naomi interrupted. "Jay-kins been there done that already. Didn't work for him. Now he studies brains with that big brain of his."
"How do you do that?" Emily asked. "Isn't it like trying to wash away water with water?"
JJ chuckled. "Very much. That's why I think most of modern psychology is a flop."
Something clicked in Emily's head. "Does this have something to do with the grand new branch of the subject you're working on?"
"Oh yeah. In a nutshell, it works under the premise that the brain is our enemy."
Emily felt her eyebrows shoot up. Naomi, who apparently knew all about the theory, gave a small laugh. "May have to get a new catch line JJ, people'll be throwing you out before getting to the table of contents."
JJ scratched the back of his neck and looked embarrassed. "You may be right. Working out what people think has never really been easy for me."
"Although you study psychology."
"It's the reason I study psychology."
"Erm," Emily interrupted again. "The brain's our enemy?"
"Yeah, er, sorry," JJ replied sheepishly. "I believe that our brain, or rather the fact that it acts as the highest organ in the body, is responsible for most of the problems as humans."
"So you're saying we'd be better off without one?"
"Well, no, since we can't actually function without one. The brain is, essentially, a place that gathers and processes information, kind of like a post office or a local internet server. But making it the center of everything is just as ridiculous as making the head of the post office the head of government. It just doesn't work that way."
"But that's exactly what we've done," said Naomi. "Skip the next part, Jay, it works alright on paper but I'm afraid Ems will fall asleep."
Emily opened her mouth to protest, but JJ was already going on.
"So what I believe we should do is treat the brain like a ball balanced on the top of a pole. It could fall any way at any time, but the only way to go is down."
"Which is bad?" Emily asked.
The other two nodded.
"And my brain has fallen?"
"I think your brain is doing its best not to. See, it does have a few self-protection mechanisms. For example, in your case, what I think your brain is doing is fabricating a net of sorts to keep itself on the pole, but to do that, it needs to create a lot of extra material."
"Which is why I'm rehearsing a play with a bunch of people who don't really exist, not in this universe anyway. Lots of help that."
"What do you think she should do about it?" Naomi poked him in the ribs.
"Like I said, not a touchy feely kind of psychologist. I'd say that since it's got all this material laid out, the only thing you need to do, Emily, is to follow it. There's a roughly 86% chance that you'll make it back to the top of the metaphorical pole."
"If the world doesn't end before that."
"Yes, somewhat worrying isn't it. Only, I should probably tell you to be careful. Don't trust what your brain tells you, which involves… well, everything really."
Emily winced. "And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"
.
Katie was sitting on the edge of the stage when Emily walked through the door. She looked pissed. Emily found herself thinking that even a non-real pissed off Katie Fitch could rank pretty high among the scariest things in the world.
"Hello, premier day? You should've been here ages ago."
"Had stuff I had to do," Emily replied.
Katie crossed her arms and stalked off. Emily sighed and knew it was going to be a long day.
Cook came out from the other side of the stage with a lamp. "Trouble with the Fitches?" he asked.
Emily shook her head. "Nah, nothing she won't get over by tonight. Can I ask you something?"
"Shoot me."
"How can you be sure that what we're doing here is real?"
He put the lamp down and sat on the couch. "Er, huh?"
"Y'know, how can we tell if what we're experiencing is real?"
Cook flexed his shoulders and looked at her. "The way I see it, it really don't matter, Emilio."
"What? Why?"
"I mean, this life thing. In the end, it's all in your head. Don't matter to me anyway."
There it was again. This brain thing.
"So if I told you that all this, our play, Katie, me, was all just hallucinations, that you're a fucking fruitcake, and your brain is going to explode tomorrow, you'll just shrug it all off?"
"Well, is there a way out? If not, I'd put the experience before everything else, since when my brain explodes, there's nothing else that belongs to me."
Katie poked her head out of the curtain. "Backstage! Now!"
.
There was something in the buzz in the air as the crowd filed in, that Emily didn't think she would ever get used to. The anticipation of something big, life-changing even, to be given out freely. By the people on stage. By her.
Emily took a deep breath and peeked around the corner of the curtain. The theater was nearly half full, which was pretty good considering it was winter break and almost Christmas.
And Naomi was sitting in the first row, arms crossed, looking thoroughly bored.
Emily was already in costume, so going out and saying hi was impossible. So she went backstage and got her phone.
"Hey," said Naomi when she picked up. "What's what?"
Emily sat on a haphazardly placed frog statue in the shadows. "It's going to start in a while. I always get the strangest feeling when on premier nights."
She heard Naomi sigh. "Tell me, is this place filled with people?"
Emily felt a bolt of shock. "Yes."
"I don't see anybody. In fact, I can actually hear you talking onstage. It's awfully quiet in here."
"Shit."
"Well, it doesn't matter. Just go with the flow, you know? Maybe I'm actually the one who doesn't exist."
Emily started rubbing her brow before she remembered she couldn't really touch her face without smearing the heavy makeup. She grimaced instead and shook her head. "I have no idea what to say to that. Did you think you were being funny?"
"No. Forget it, go do your thing, I'll meet you outside afterwards or something."
Emily hung up and sighed.
Katie appeared behind her. "What are you doing here?"
Emily almost decided to tell her nothing and walk away. Instead, she turned around and told her, "Somebody told me that you all don't exist."
"Smack them in the head and ask again," was Katie's answer. They stared at each other for a moment. "Jesus. You're serious, aren't you." It wasn't a question.
Emily nodded.
"Well, then it means that either that person doesn't exist, or I don't. Reality is subjective, choose whichever you want."
"Huh?"
Katie let out a long breath and took a seat on a wooden crate that looked like it'd been there since Noah. "The way I see it, there is no absolute reality. Like that," she pointed at a piece of bright green cloth lying on stage, "I say it's green, you say it's green. But how do we know that we're seeing the same green? So I see a world, and you see two. Good for you. All you have to do is decide what to do with them, because it doesn't really matter what's real. Or if there is a real, for that matter."
"Do you think I'm losing it?"
"Nah. I would've seen it if you are. Come on, let's get this show going and over with."
.
The show had gone without any major hitch (although the odd accidents happened as they always do), and it was time for the final act, with only Emily and Cook. She took her place on the couch and waited or the lights to come on.
When they did, she saw for a split second Naomi's face, before the lights went up all the way and she couldn't see beyond the edge of the stage anymore. She blinked.
Cook crashed in. Emily could see his lips moving, but a strange roaring in her ears kept her from hearing him clearly. She blinked and frowned.
He tugged her forward and she nearly fell. She felt the bookcase against her back.
Knife in hands. Cook with arms spread open. Emily's knees felt weak, and the only thing she could see clearly was the dust waltzing around in the air. She looked at the blade again, noticing that her hands were shaking.
She glanced out towards the audience, seeing only Naomi in the seat closest to her, sitting on the edge of her seat. The roaring in her ears surged and crashed like an ocean. Naomi flickered.
Ah, Emily's mind thought distantly. So she's the one that doesn't exist after all.
Everything went silent. She looked back at Cook. He smirked, and for a moment Emily was confused. He looked so… normal. But then Cook gave a horrific yell and came running towards her, and Emily knew she hadn't missed her cue.
Their struggle was short and carefully choreographed, and Emily could do it in her sleep if she wanted to. As she plunged the knife into his chest, she felt the blade retract into the handle and knew that all was good. The lights dimmed, leaving only a spotlight on her.
She stood up and stumbled to the fake balcony at the front of the stage.
"There, I've done it again," she began, sinking to her knees. "This time, I murdered him with my own hands."
Emily had thought that Katie's last part was melodramatic and way too long, and had spent countless evenings trying to get her to cut it short. Katie, being Katie, hadn't listened. "It all needs to be there," she'd argued. "It wouldn't be complete. Besides, you're just trying to get out of remembering all those lines."
But as Emily threw herself into her performance, it all fell into place. Katie was right. It was necessary, complete. The audience was so quiet Emily felt like she was the only one in the theater. She pulled herself to her feet.
"I can't leave him behind now. He's as much a part of me as I am myself."
She felt someone behind her. Cook was right on his cue this time. An arm circled her shoulders.
Emily stiffened. Cook's arm was heavier, more muscular. She glanced behind her, and saw Naomi. Her eyes widened.
Naomi pressed a finger to her lips, then pointed out towards the audience. "What do you see?"
"Nothing," Emily replied truthfully.
"Look closer. What do you see?"
The spotlight suddenly went out, leaving only the emergency lights, and then Emily saw it. She swallowed. "Nobody."
"Exactly."
Emily turned back towards the stage, but the two of them were the only ones in the theater. "Naomi?"
"Yes?"
"Why is the couch melting?"
It was. It lost its shape and sunk without a sound into the ground. The bookcase collapsed into dust. The curtain disappeared into the shadows.
"Wow. Seems I don't need to text you after all."
They watched in calm wonder as the entire building disintegrated around them. The sun came up and went down again. Stars exploded into bright fireworks lighting up the sky. Emily looked down and saw herself floating in the middle of nothing at all.
Emily looked at Naomi, who still had a hand on her shoulder. Naomi was staring at her with a look of intense interest.
"What?" Emily asked.
"You're kind of beautiful."
"The fabric of our universe is disappearing and that's what you think about?"
Naomi grinned. "No whiteboards in sight."
"Why are we the only ones left?"
"Must be something special about us."
"How long do you think we'll last?"
"Beats me. Can I kiss you?"
"OK."
.
.
End
Of course I didn't come up with all of this myself. All the names of the theories that Naomi uses are real. The implications and their actual effect on the world, entirely made up. (So don't use any of it in physics exams, kids!) I don't know shit about psychology though.
The play that Emily and Cook act in is a part of an actual play that some friends and I are producing lately. It just all clicked together, though the plot is totally different.
I'd love to hear your theories on what's going on, and I'm pretty sure that lots of them will be pretty illuminating.