Convergence--Excerpt of Ch. 1

Chapter 1: The Great Slapping

William McEwen was not exactly 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 they are not common. But, for William McEwen the common side effect of the uncommon event had him feeling a bit off.

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. If he were being honest, 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 actually been doing was daydreaming, and his daydream involved him doing something—anything—other than sitting in a cubicle.

Because of the daydreaming he was not sure exactly when or how it had happened, but for the last twenty seconds, or so, he had gone from sitting in his cubicle allegedly minding his own business 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 part of just standing there 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 ago, but now he did have. His mind 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 of memories 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, although he no longer remembered what non-cubicle-sitting activity the daydream was about. 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 Christos and Stern.

He also remembered his wife and two daughters—not the same wife and daughters, but a different lovely woman and two other girls—who were at that moment running 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-five seconds, Perth…and Salt Lake City.

He sat down, right there 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. It was a good thing that he sat himself down before taking it in, because the splendor surrounding him literally took his breath. The involuntary exhale caused by his breath’s sudden, unplanned evacuation forced him to vocalize a sound something like, “Oontpf.” It also made him drool a bit; he wiped the spittle off of his chin with the shoulder of his sleeve.

Again he tried to survey his surroundings to get a 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 like, where the Sam Hill, and how in the Dickens. He also asked a few general questions like, what the… and how the…. The most shocking revelation from this inquisition 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. However, the how the…, what the…, and Dickens-related lines of questioning and their derivatives were still items for discovery.

William turned his attention back to his surroundings, Granda’s farm. Thinking that perhaps if he investigated his location he might be able to fill in a what the… or two. He attempted to get his mind around the knoll that he suddenly occupied, in order to formulate a description that might help him analyze his situation. Neither he nor he—the two sets of memories suddenly occupying the same space—was a particularly analytical person, but it seemed like what a smart person would do, and being smart seemed to be smart as well.

Without looking down, he dug his fingers into the grass and wiggled them until they penetrated the thatch and sunk into the nearly black soil. He gripped the grass. Then, with both hands, he 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 with this place. Again, he tried to find words to describe the setting, words that would help him comprehend his more-tenuous-than-he-realized place in the universe. A minute-and-a-half ago his life, lifes—with an f—actually, had been comfortably mundane, but now he wasn’t so sure—if he could just find some blasted words!

These words—had they been available to him—are accurate, but they would not have been sufficient: striking, stunning, exquisite, otherworldly, charming, fertile, green. 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. He really could not describe it, because this particular knoll was all but indescribable.
Unfortunately for his comprehension level, William began to realize that this place was not something one filed a description for, but this was a place to be experienced. He reluctantly stopped trying to find words. Words were not available to him anyway, the knoll being all but indescribable and all.

“Are ya ready, then?” panted the lovely, slightly winded woman, his wife, Tina. Their outing to Granda’s farm was at an end. Granda had long ago passed on, but the family still held the title to the fairly small parcel of land. Granda had scrapped and scraped and scrimped and scrumped and fought legal battles to be able to own that land, they weren’t about to up and sell it. The family leased the parcel to a local conglomerate of barley and cereal farmers, which resulted in a very small 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 called the stipend, “granda’s meal ticket.” Out of nostalgia they would take an occasional trek to the “homestead,” and that is what William, Tina and the girls were up to today.

“Aye,” 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, not a fan of soccer and 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 Kate. The other was Emma. Oddly, these were the same names as his other two, American, daughters, but in reverse birth order. Sure, Kate and Emma were very popular names both in the UK and in the US, but this coincidence felt to him a bit like 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.

“Sumthin’s gone awry,” 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 his 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 laugh felt the contentment that came to his new set of memories. It sounded a lot like the tinkle of a crystalline bell an octave or so lower, which is a wonderful thing for laughter to sound 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. 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 semi-circles in an attempt to loosen the tensing muscles. It seemed to help.

Tina’s laugh had also calmed him a bit, and he was attracted to it in almost the same way that he was attracted to 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 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. It seemed likely that she would at any moment break that pout into a smirk that could, given time, become a full-fledged smile. And, it also seemed likely that if her smile became full-fledged it would, if applied correctly, melt glaciers. 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. It was confusing.

Tina’s eyes were on the road, “stay to the left would ye? I’d like to get home still breathin’, I would.”

William yanked the metallic-blue box 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 take a go at singin’ a 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 Burns tune, he sensed that the singing of one would sufficiently distract him from his growing uncertainty and keep him able to concentrate on driving. Kate, 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 Emma, joined in with her by the third or fourth word.

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. As he did so, he tried not to panic as he drove one of his cars containing one of his families to one of his homes.