Status: This is the strangest story you will ever have the pleasure of reading.
The Entanglement of Cat and Rin Schrodinger
Ch. 18
Chapter eighteen
Cat
“Momma, look those two girls are twins!” I twist around quickly, trying to pinpoint the speaker. I find him in the crowd, a five year old boy with shiny black hair holding on tightly to his mother’s hand so as to not be swept away by the tide of New York’s populace. He’s the fourth person who’s voiced this observation. I flash a swift brilliant smile at him before he’s swallowed up by the throng of people, obscuring him from my view. But the words stay with me. We do look exactly like twins. I muse passively.
Rin grabs my arm excitedly . “I’ve got something!”
The rift sensor, as we’ve newly dubbed it, has a one of its plethora of needles moving in indeed a “wiggly way”. I suddenly think of the clips of honey bees I’ve since on TV. The tiny insects dancing in their hives, pointing out a superior pollen source to others. The needle makes its way lazily to a direction I think is south. Brooklynn. No, Battery Park. Of course.
“I know where’s its going.” I take Rin’s hand and begin pushing through the masses of New Yorkers, gaining new swearwords every minute. We could take the subway, but I’m pretty sure we’re close enough to run. I take Rin down an alley make a quick right, then right again. Across a busy road and I’m there. The courtyard I stared into the fountain of days before, in a different time, a different world. And I mean that quite literally too.
The memorial should be just around the corner. The place where I started this crazy venture into the world of randomized atoms and alternate worlds. Where I’ll end it too.
Rin hands me the sensor. “You were right. The needle’s going wild. Your rift should be anywhere right here.”
We’re just approaching the corner of the building that should reveal the—
“Oh no...” My shoulders slump and my headache is dangerously tittering on coming back full force. It’s simply not there. Instead a red brick building sits innocently enough on my one hope on getting Rin to Pax Illume. What happened?
“Riiiiiin?” I ask drawing out my words, in some hope that that will change her answer, which I sadly already know. “Wasn’t there some large epidemic in Ireland, say, about a century and a half ago?”
Rin shakes her head, confused. “Not that I can think of. Like a plague or something?”
“More like a huge food shortage.” I groan. Terra didn’t have an Irish Potato Blight. The situation is entirely plausible; A ship possibly carrying the virus sinks in a storm, a diseased potato thrown out; the possibilities are endless. The epidemic was cleanly removed from their history. It’s. Just. Not. There.
I lean my forehead against the brick building and stay there. No way back into Pax Illume, or earth, for who knows how long. I’m on the brink of giving up, when: “Cat?” Rin’s voice floats over to me, cutting through my unneeded self pity. “What exactly were we looking for? Because...I think I found it.”
Cat
“Momma, look those two girls are twins!” I twist around quickly, trying to pinpoint the speaker. I find him in the crowd, a five year old boy with shiny black hair holding on tightly to his mother’s hand so as to not be swept away by the tide of New York’s populace. He’s the fourth person who’s voiced this observation. I flash a swift brilliant smile at him before he’s swallowed up by the throng of people, obscuring him from my view. But the words stay with me. We do look exactly like twins. I muse passively.
Rin grabs my arm excitedly . “I’ve got something!”
The rift sensor, as we’ve newly dubbed it, has a one of its plethora of needles moving in indeed a “wiggly way”. I suddenly think of the clips of honey bees I’ve since on TV. The tiny insects dancing in their hives, pointing out a superior pollen source to others. The needle makes its way lazily to a direction I think is south. Brooklynn. No, Battery Park. Of course.
“I know where’s its going.” I take Rin’s hand and begin pushing through the masses of New Yorkers, gaining new swearwords every minute. We could take the subway, but I’m pretty sure we’re close enough to run. I take Rin down an alley make a quick right, then right again. Across a busy road and I’m there. The courtyard I stared into the fountain of days before, in a different time, a different world. And I mean that quite literally too.
The memorial should be just around the corner. The place where I started this crazy venture into the world of randomized atoms and alternate worlds. Where I’ll end it too.
Rin hands me the sensor. “You were right. The needle’s going wild. Your rift should be anywhere right here.”
We’re just approaching the corner of the building that should reveal the—
“Oh no...” My shoulders slump and my headache is dangerously tittering on coming back full force. It’s simply not there. Instead a red brick building sits innocently enough on my one hope on getting Rin to Pax Illume. What happened?
“Riiiiiin?” I ask drawing out my words, in some hope that that will change her answer, which I sadly already know. “Wasn’t there some large epidemic in Ireland, say, about a century and a half ago?”
Rin shakes her head, confused. “Not that I can think of. Like a plague or something?”
“More like a huge food shortage.” I groan. Terra didn’t have an Irish Potato Blight. The situation is entirely plausible; A ship possibly carrying the virus sinks in a storm, a diseased potato thrown out; the possibilities are endless. The epidemic was cleanly removed from their history. It’s. Just. Not. There.
I lean my forehead against the brick building and stay there. No way back into Pax Illume, or earth, for who knows how long. I’m on the brink of giving up, when: “Cat?” Rin’s voice floats over to me, cutting through my unneeded self pity. “What exactly were we looking for? Because...I think I found it.”