Late Summer 2009

W

illiam McEwen was not quite feeling like himself. This is a common side effect that accompanies human involvement in a delayed wave-function collapse as defined by quantum physics. That is, it would be a common side effect if delays in the collapsing of wave functions involving humans were all that common. Luckily for most people, delayed wave-function collapses are not common. But, for William McEwen the common side effect of the uncommon event had him not quite feeling like himself. 

   Most people would feel a bit off in his situation, probably, because no more than twenty seconds earlier he had been sitting in his cubicle on the fourth floor of the Bangerter Rampton State Government Building in Salt Lake City, Utah, minding his own business. Actually, he had merely been trying to look like he was minding his own business in an I’m-working-hard sort of way. What he had in fact been doing was daydreaming, and his daydream had involved him in something other than sitting in a cubicle. 

   His daydream had also stolen his focus, so he was not sure exactly when or how it had happened, but for the last twenty seconds, or so, he had transitioned from sitting in his cubicle daydreaming to just standing there. The just standing part was interesting to him, because he didn’t remember getting up from his seat. But, the there where he was just standing is what had William feeling a bit off, because there was a whole new place altogether. There was a grassy knoll on his grandfather’s farm in Scotland. This presented an interesting problem for William, because William did not have any grandfathers that owned farms in Scotland. 

   Wait.

   On second thought, maybe he did have. Yes, he certainly did have. He didn’t have twenty-three seconds earlier, but now he did have. He shuddered, no, recoiled at the utter confusion of it. After all, William doesn’t usually suddenly have Scottish grandfathers. 

   William noticed another interesting problem: he now—along with a new “granda”—was the confused owner of two complete sets of memories. Sixty-eight years’ worth in total—two sets of thirty-four. Equally clear, equally detailed, equally full of persons, places, and things, but utterly separate memories.

   He clearly remembered, for instance, his life in Salt Lake City, Utah. He remembered daydreaming in his cubicle twenty-six seconds ago. He remembered his lovely wife; Virginia was her name—Ginny for short. He remembered his four children—two boys and two girls. He remembered his home on the corner of Graces Circle and West Afton Street. 

   He also remembered his wife and two daughters—not the same wife and daughters he had just been thinking about, but a different lovely woman and two other girls—who were at that moment moving quickly toward him on the knoll. He was also from there: Perth, Scotland. Well, technically, there was a farm somewhere between Strathallan Castle and Crieff, a half-hour’s drive south and west of Perth. But, where he happened to be standing at that moment did not change where he was from, which was, for the last thirty seconds, Perth…and Salt Lake City.

   He sat down, right there on a knob on the knoll. It smelled of grass and dirt and maybe sheep. William attempted to scan the scene, but the beauty of Granda’s knoll was almost overpowering. He was glad to be sitting, because the splendor surrounding him literally took his breath. The involuntary exhale caused by his breath’s sudden, unplanned evacuation forced him to vocalize something like, “Oontpf.” His vocalization caused him to drool a bit; he wiped the spittle off of his chin with the shoulder part of his sleeve. 

   Surveying his surroundings again, he tried to make some sense of where he was suddenly located and what he was suddenly doing. In his confusion, he asked himself a couple of quick, clarifying questions: where the Sam Hill? and how in the Dickens? Other questions came out half formed: what the… and how the…? The most shocking revelation from this self-inquiry was that, due to his new set of memories, he already knew an uncomfortable number of the answers. He knew indeed, for example, where the Sam Hill he was. He quickly realized that the what the…, and Dickens-related questions were unanswerable. 

   William turned his attention back to his surroundings, Granda’s farm. Perhaps if he investigated his location or conducted some type of analysis, he might discover an answer or two. Neither he nor he—the two sets of memories apparently occupying the same space—was a particularly analytical person, but it seemed like the thing a smart person would do in this particular situation, and being a smart person felt like it might help.

   Instinctively, and without looking down, he dug his fingers into the grass and wiggled them until they penetrated the thatch and pushed about three-quarters of an inch, or two centimeters, into the nearly black soil. He gripped the grass. Then, with both hands, pulled, tearing chunks of thatch, roots and all, from the earth. He held them up to his face and inspected the random crisscrossing patterns of the root systems. The scent of the loam was vaguely familiar. 

   He wasn’t looking for anything in particular; maybe he was just attempting to kinesthetically connect himself to this place. Not quite a minute-and-a-half ago his life, lifes—with an f—actually, had been comfortably mundane, but now he wasn’t so sure. 

   He looked for words to describe his surroundings—maybe, if he could just find some blasted words! 

   The following words, had they been available to him in his confusion, are accurate descriptors for the knoll, but even then they would not have been sufficient: striking, stunning, exquisite, otherworldly, charming, fertile. At last, one word came to his mind, and he whispered it to himself(s), “green.” 

   As the word passed his lips, he realized that this was not the kind of green that William McEwen of Salt Lake City, Utah, was used to; this green was from a completely different color wheel. William began to realize that Granda’s knoll was not something one filed a description for, but this was a place to be experienced. Indescribable, he thought—he really could not describe it, which, he realized, is what indescribable means.

   “Are ya ready, then?” panted the lovely, slightly winded woman, his wife, Tina. Their outing to Granda’s farm was at an end. Granda McEwan had long ago passed on, but the family still held the title to the relatively modest parcel of land. Granda had scrapped and scraped and scrimped and scrumped and faced legal challenges to be able to own that land; they would not sell it. 

   The family leased the parcel to a local conglomerate of barley and cereal farmers, which resulted in a relatively modest monthly stipend that the family split six ways as there were six remaining blood relatives; eight, if his daughters were counted—they weren’t as yet. The family lovingly referred to the stipend as “Granda’s meal ticket.” Out of nostalgia they would take an occasional trek to the “homestead,” and that is why William, Tina, and the girls were there on this particular day. 

   “Aye, ready,” he replied to Tina’s inquiry. Half of him was shocked by his fairly thick Scottish accent. William was to himself both familiar and foreign. He was also both an American and a Scot, a Mormon and a member of the Kirk—the Church of Scotland, he explained to himself. He also was not a fan of soccer but was a fan of football—the European kind of football, which went without saying to half of him.

   “Da, you look flummoxed,” said one of the girls. Her name was Margaret. The other girl was Lily. Oddly, these names, Lily and Margaret, were the same names as his other two, American, daughters but in reverse birth order. Almost the same names, that is, because Scottish Margaret went by Mysie while American Margaret was Maggie. And Scottish Lily was actually named Lilith, while American Lily, was just Lily. Sure, Margaret and Lily were reasonably common names both in the UK and in the US, but this coincidence stirred in him a similar feeling to déjà vu. Actually, trying to reconcile two sets of memories was a lot like déjà vu, an exceptionally lot like brain-wrinkling, vertigo-inducing déjà vu. He shook his head like a boxer trying to clear the cobwebs after a particularly well-connected blow.

   “I suppose I am a might flummoxed,” William mumbled, “I’m not exactly myself.” He stood. He was thinner than half of him remembered, stronger, and maybe shorter. No, not shorter. Whatever the case, he knew that half of him was not in its usual living space. Tina noticed his puzzlement and interpreted it as weariness.

   “Are ye ready for the knacker’s yard, Numpty?” Numpty was her pet name for him. It means idiot. In fact, one translation of her question is, are you so tired that you should be made into glue, idiot? From Tina it wasn’t hurtful, at least not to the part of him that knew her. The other part of him didn’t know her and may have been offended if he had known what knacker or numpty meant.

   “Nae. I’m well enough.” He shook his head again and walked toward the car.

*  *  *  *  *

   While driving the little family back to their home in Perth, and while fighting the compulsion to move to the right side of the road, William asked Tina, “You ever know anyone in America?”

   Tina looked at him, “are you a daftie? Who would I know in America?”

William shrugged, “Jus’ curious.”

   Tina asked, “How lon’ hae we been married?” 

   Six years, thought William—two years fewer than he and his American wife’s eight years. 

   “An’ now ye’re ‘jus’ curious’ ‘bout who I have stashed away in America, are ye?”

   He shrugged again. Tina laughed. To the half of William that was familiar with it, her laugh felt like home. The half not familiar with Tina’s laughter recognized the contentment that came to his new set of memories. Her laughter was somewhat like the tinkle of a crystalline bell, which is a wonderful thing for laughter to be like. His American self relaxed ever so slightly. 

   Slightly relaxing allowed William to pay attention to what he was otherwise feeling, and paying attention to what he was otherwise feeling caused William to realize that he had been experiencing quite a lot of stress over the last few minutes. He also noticed that the back of his head hurt at the base just above the neck. It was a familiar pain—to both sets of memories—that usually accompanies stress. 

   He scanned the rest of the body he occupied to see if other areas were feeling the effects. His inventory revealed that his shoulders, neck, back, and calves were flexed tight and that his stomach was knotted. He rolled his head around in a couple of semicircles in an attempt to loosen the tensing muscles. It seemed to help.

   Tina’s laughter had a calming effect on him, and he was attracted to it in almost the same way that he was attracted to his other wife Ginny’s distinctive laughter. All of William smiled. He glanced at Tina. At least that was his intention, to glance, but he found that once he turned his eyes to look at her he couldn’t pull them back, his glance turned into a gaze, just shy of a gawk. 

   The angle of the setting sun illuminated her auburn hair and bathed her left temple and cheek in dusk’s luminous honey. William was struck by her soft glow. She was cherubic or angelic or heavenly or some other term reserved for describing the divine. Her facial expression was serious, but soft. Her lips’ natural position was in a slight pout. Not an angry pout, but the kind that is often employed to cover amusement, which caused William to wonder if she was on the verge of more crystalline laughter. He wondered if she would, at any moment, twist her pout into a smirk that, given time, would become a full-fledged smile. And, he wondered what would happen if her smile became full-fledged. He wondered if it were dangerous—in the best possible way. She was beautiful. 

   He wanted to examine her figure but remembered that he was looking through the eyes of her husband, or maybe they were his eyes and her husband was the guest. Whatever the case, he thought better of ogling the wife of his new host, or was it ogling his wife while a stranger looked on. His life was confusing. 

   Tina’s eyes were on the road, “Stay to the left would ye?” she said, “I’d like to get home still breathin’, wouldn’t I?” 

   William yanked the metallic-blue, box-like car he drove back onto the right side of the road, which was, in this case, the left side of the road. Shocked back to reality, such as it was, William realized that he needed a less-consuming distraction to occupy his mind. 

   “Anyone care tae take a go at a Bobby Burns tune?” William’s Scottish self suggested to the little family. Although his American self hadn’t the first clue what exactly would constitute a “Bobby Burns tune,” he sensed that “taking a go” at one would sufficiently distract him from his growing uncertainty and keep him able to concentrate on driving. Mysie, the oldest of his Scottish daughters led out from the back seat with a strong and charming five-year-old voice. The others, including little Lily, joined in.

   O my love’s like a red, red rose,

   That’s newly sprung in June;

   O my love’s like the melody

   That’s sweetly sung in tune.

   As fair art thou, my bonnie lass

   So deep in love am I;

   And I will love thee still, my dear,

   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

   Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

   And I will love thee still, my dear,

   While the sand o’ life shall run.

   And fare-thee-weel, my only love!

   And fare-thee-weel, a while!

   And I will come again, my love, 

   Tho’ ‘twere ten thousand mile!

   Staying on the correct side of the road, William McEwen sang every word and every note of a song that half of him had never heard. He did his best not to panic as he drove one of his cars containing one of his families to one of his homes.