A Carton of Eggs

I didn’t know at the time how I came unstuck. It happened on a day like any other day. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood. I do this at least three times a week. Walking around my neighborhood is much more enjoyable than going to the gym. Who wouldn’t rather be outdoors in the fresh air than indoors with a bunch of smelly sweaty bodies? Though I’ve been to the gym plenty of times, too. But that comes later.

On this day I was walking around a cul-de-sac admiring my neighbors’ landscaping. I live in a suburb of Cincinnati. At the present. So there are a lot of hydrangeas, hibiscus, roses, lilies. We get plenty of rain, and the winters aren’t too extreme. Not that I’m not used to extreme winters.

Anyway, with one step I was walking down a street in my neighborhood. With the very next I was walking on a treadmill in a gym. I staggered off it and nearly fell flat on my face.

A woman on a treadmill next to me stopped hers. “Are you okay?”

Hell, no. What had happened? How had I ended up there? I staggered away.

“Are you coming back?”

I turned back to see she was as concerned as before. I shrugged. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Or where I was. Or how I had gotten there. I was just there.

She pointed to the treadmill I had nearly broken my neck on. “You left your phone.”

I went back to look. It wasn’t my phone. I walked off. I’d never been in this gym before. I know, they all pretty much look the same, but I’d never spent much time in any gym. I plopped down into the first chair I came to. What was going on?

“Larry?”

I didn’t look up because my name wasn’t Larry.

But this guy insisted it was. “Larry? Are you okay?”

I looked up. Like the woman on the treadmill next to me, I’d never seen this man before.

Yet he acted like he knew me. He sat down beside me. “Did you overdo it? On the treadmill?”

I could see why he might think that. I was hyperventilating. But that was from panic, not over-exercising. I shook my head.

“Do I need to take you to the emergency room?”

Another head shake. “Could you take me home?”

“Of course. You probably shouldn’t be driving.”

When I got up my legs were trembling. He started to put an arm around me, but I shook him off. Walking out to the parking lot I told him my address.

Which got me a concerned look. “That’s not your address, Larry. Are you sure I can’t take you to the hospital? You could be having a stroke.”

“Please just drive me home.”

I climbed in the passenger side of a blue Toyota Camry.

Behind the wheel of a white Honda Odyssey. That was driving down the road. I screamed, slamming on the brake.

“Mommy! What’s wrong?”

Mommy? A horn blared behind me. I had stopped in the middle of the road. I eased over to the shoulder, shifted into park, put my flashers on. Then looked into the rearview mirror to see who had called me Mommy. Behind me was a young boy strapped into a safety seat. In the rearview mirror was the face of a young woman. I looked down. The shirt I was wearing swelled out as if it was covering breasts. I pulled the neck out and peered down inside. Yes, there were breasts in there. Big ones.

“Mommy! Let’s go!”

I couldn’t be dreaming. You had to be asleep to dream, and I’d never fallen asleep while walking through my neighborhood. Or on a treadmill. Could I have had a stroke? Like my friend suggested? Friend, hell, I’d never seen the guy before. Now I was a woman? I was shaking so bad I couldn’t think straight.

“Mommy! I’m hungry!”

I turned around for a good look at the kid. He didn’t look familiar at all. “Mommy needs her valium.”

“Go home!”

I wondered where that was? I turned on the satellite navigation and punched in Home. ‘Acquiring satellites’ was announced as I stared at the screen in a daze.

Satellites appeared firing lasers at each other. I threw my game controller down and lunged back flat onto a bed. I had been sitting on the edge of.

Next to a teenage boy, still sitting up and also holding a game controller. “Are you quitting?”

“YES!!” I jumped up and staggered all about. “I quit! I give up!” I was in a bedroom. A teenage boy’s bedroom most likely, with the Michael Jordan poster on the wall, right next to one of Cheryl Tiegs. I slapped my chest. It was flat. I grabbed my crotch. Yes, it was there.

“Don’t get weird.”

I looked at the boy who had spoken. A frail pimply-faced boy in his early teens with crazy hair. I lunged over to the dresser mirror. I was a brown-skinned teenage boy.

“If you need to go to the bathroom, you know where it’s at. Don’t pee in my sock drawer.”

I looked to the screen sitting on his desk. We were playing some kind of space shooter. But the graphics didn’t look right. They were primitive, jagged. Like a video game from the eighties. And the sounds. Was that MIDI? I couldn’t move. I was locked onto the thirteen-inch portable TV screen. With an Atari 2600 console hooked up to it.

“Are you mental?”

I couldn’t do this anymore. “I’ve got to go.” I ran out the door.

And fell to the ground flat on my face.

“Mom!”

Was I back in the minivan? No, I was laying on grass. Had I wrecked and been thrown from the vehicle?

Someone took my arm and gently pulled me up. “You’ve got to be careful.”

The voice was different. It wasn’t a young child, like before, the last time I was a woman. It was an adult. A grown woman. She steadied me on my feet. “Are you alright?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. I sounded like a woman. An old woman. I focused on the woman holding me. She looked old. If she thought I was her mother then I must look ancient.

“Let’s sit down.” She carefully escorted me to a bench.

As I shuffled along at her side I looked around. I was in a cemetery. “Am I dead?”

“You will be if you keep falling like that. That’s the one thing you can’t do, is fall. That’s the worst thing a senior can do.” She eased me down into a bench then sat next to me. “We came here to visit Dad’s grave. Remember?”

I’d had enough. I needed answers. No more trying to fake it. I looked the old woman sitting beside me square in the face. “Who am I?”

“Mom,” she moaned, tears in her eyes. “Your Alzheimer’s is getting worse.” She hugged me.

I gave in and returned the hug, but not to the old woman who called me mom. This was a young woman. That I was laying on top of. In bed. Who was naked. I flung myself away from her.

“Don’t get so upset, Don. It happens.”

I saw I was naked, too. Middle-aged. And kind of flabby. I yanked the sheet up over me. “What happens?”

“It’s nothing.” She smiled, reaching out to stroke my face.

I scooted further back.

This brought a scowl. “Don. Don’t be childish about it.”

“About what?”

“E D.”

I lifted the sheet to look. I was limp as a steamed noodle.

“Can’t we just cuddle? That’s all. Just hold each other for a while.”

I looked back up. The woman was gorgeous. I was naked in bed with a beautiful willing naked woman and couldn’t do anything about it.

She took me in her arms and pulled me close. Ahh. Maybe we could just hold each other for a while. Maybe I could just relax for a while. Calm down. I slipped my arms around her. This felt so good, so soothing. The crazy train had been running off the rails. If I could just slow it down, for a while, get my bearings.

“See, Don.” I looked to see her smiling at me. “I feel something stirring down there already. This is all you need to do, just relax.” She pulled me closer.

And slammed me down to the ground. Wham! Breath. Knocked. Out. Of. Me. I looked up from flat on my back, gasping for air, unable to move a muscle. A soldier towered above me with his rifle held high in both hands, its long bayonet gleaming. With murderous rage, he drove it down to my chest.

I rolled to the side at the last instant. Knocking one leg out from under him as his bayonet plunged into the dirt.

He fell to one knee, hanging onto his rifle to keep from toppling. He scrambled back up and yanked on his rifle, but the bayonet was buried deep.

I scrambled to my feet and ran.

A battlefield. Soldiers milling all about in blue and grey. A Civil War re-enactment? A bullet whistled by my ear. Re-enactment, hell. That sounded real. I screamed as a cannonball exploded nearby, pelting me with clods of dirt. Smoke hung all around. Men cried out, a bugle…a bugle?!...somewhere. A man on horseback galloped by. Wails, gunfire. I tripped over a bloody body and went sprawling.

“I got you!”

I rolled over onto my back. He was there! Above me, with his rifle raised high again. The maniac had chased after me! He drove his bayonet down once again. 

As I pinned a butterfly to a board. Finding I could scream, I screamed.

“Did you stick yourself, Adelia?”

I jerked upright to my feet and staggered about. An elderly man in old-fashioned clothes, with an old-fashioned white beard and moustache of ZZ Top proportions, grabbed me by the shoulders. “Let me see, dear.” He examined one of my numbly pliant hands, then the other. “I don’t see any blood.”

“I thought I was dead!”

He chuckled. “It’s just a pin. You could hardly kill yourself with it.” He bent to pick up the board on which several dozen butterflies were impaled that I had flung to the ground. “Look what you’ve done. You’ll ruin your collection.”

I sagged into a ball on the bench where I was seated, sobbing. “Stop, please. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Stop what? This?” He swept his arm in a wide arc, indicating the small flower garden they were in. “You’ve always loved it here in our garden.”

I unballed enough to gaze about. A compact walled garden surrounded me, with a fountain, several statues, and an abundance of bright blooms. Unpinned butterflies fluttered all about in the bright sunny air. “Our garden?”

He handed the board back to me. “You’ve loved this garden since I brought you here on our wedding day.”

“We’re married?” I leaned over to peer into the pool of water in the fountain I sat beside. I saw the reflection of a young woman in a vintage Victorian dress. “We can’t be married. You’re too old. You’re old enough to be my father. My grandfather.”

He backhanded me so hard I went flying off the bench.

I looked up into the blazing sun, my face stinging.

“Don’t look at me like that again, boy!”

When I touched my burning cheek, I saw my hand was black.

The man towering above me, who I couldn’t make out in the bright daylight, kicked me in the ribs. “Get up and get back to work!”

I crawled to my knees.

He kicked me again. “I said get up!”

I rose up to my full height. I towered above my assailant. A scrawny little white man. I looked myself over. I was huge.

He touched the coiled whip dangling from his belt. “If you make me use this, boy, I’m not stopping until I get tired.”

I looked around. A cotton field filled with slaves, both men and women, picking the blooms and stuffing them into large sacks. The air waved with the dense wet heat. I’d finally made it to Hell. I reached down to the cotton plant at my feet to pluck a soft white ball.

I pulled off a berry. I held it up before my eyes. It was red, not white.

I looked around. Several women were scattered about, children bumbling about their legs. The women wore rags, the children nothing at all. They were picking berries from the bushes we were in the midst of. A cool breeze chilled the air.

I looked myself over. I was a woman once again. No longer such a novelty. Rags similar to what the others wore hung on my bony body. Aged, it looked like and felt like. Aches from every joint and muscle speared me. Peering into the bag I held, some animal skin, I saw it was nearly full of red berries. How long had it been since I ate?

I dropped down and pulled a handful out. They looked okay to eat. These women wouldn’t be picking them it they weren’t. I popped one in. Not much to them, sort of sour. Still, I was tired and hungry and disgusted and ready to give up. Time for dinner. I pulled out a handful to eat.

The back of my head exploded in pain. I plunged forward, spilling what I held and half the contents of my sack, and looked up from the ground. A woman stood above me holding a stick. Had she whacked me? Why? She screamed and made a fierce face, waving the stick around like she was going to do it again. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, if they were words. A lot of grunting and screeching. I felt the back of my head then checked my fingers. No blood. Damn, I must have a thick skull.

The woman swung her stick and caught me on the shoulder this time. That did it. I grabbed that stick and yanked it out of her hands. Jumping up, I saw she was really old. I couldn’t hit her back. So I broke the stick over my knee and threw the pieces away.

The old woman wasn’t backing down. She continued to scream and dance around. While I figured I could handle her, all the other women were now watching. And they didn’t look happy. Some of them began to gather around us. I guess I shouldn’t have broken her stick.  Was she upset because I’d quit working? Because I’d eaten some of the berries? I had no idea.

The knot of ominous women continued to tighten around me. So I ran. Only not far. I was barefoot. There were rocks. They hurt. I tumbled to the ground, scooting across more rocks. Right up to the edge of a cliff. I was on a mountainside. For as far as I could see were other mountains, forests, lakes, rivers. An amazing panorama of wilderness. It was glorious.

But I was exhausted. Hurt. Hungry. Bewildered. The women had caught up with me. There was nowhere to go. I didn’t know what the old woman out front was saying, but her body language was blatant. She wanted the others to beat me to a pulp. Screw that. I’d had enough. I jumped.

I soared through the air. How high up was I? Forty feet? Fifty? I kept soaring. I wasn’t falling. I was flying. Below was a barren landscape, not the verdant primeval mountain forest I’d seen before. Above was a pitch-black sky. With twinkling stars.

“That was amazing, Dad!”

I had a radio in my ear.

“I thought you were hopping into space that time. Be careful.” A different voice. Female. Adult.

“Careful with what?”

“The mag-levs. Why don’t you come back in. Dinner is almost ready.”

I started to descend, wondering what mag-levs were and how I was supposed to be careful with them. They could be in the heavy belt I was wearing, or the bulky boots. I was also clad in a light full-body suit, and a helmet with a faceplate so clear I hadn’t even noticed it before. Through it I caught a glimpse of the Earth in the inky sky. Was I on the Moon?

I floated back down to the surface, landing with a soft jolt that sent a storm of regolith up all around me. I scanned the horizon as the dust thinned. It sure looked like pictures I’d seen of the lunar landscape. Except in the distance there was a bubble-like structure.

“Honey? Are you okay?”

“Yes. I just want to stop and catch my breath.”

“Don’t be long.”

I stared off at the bubble. How far was it? Panic was starting to rustle. I didn’t have any oxygen tanks on me. Where was my air coming from? Would I have enough to make it back?

Yes.

Where had that come from?

Hal. 

Who is Hal?

Your smart bubble.

A home network?

Yes.

How do these mag-levs work?

Face home. Hop.

That’s it?

I’ll control the rest.

I decided to try a short hop to start. Something safe. I barely flexed my legs. I went soaring. “Hal!”

Yes?

“Not so high!”

Sorry, Dave, I can’t do that. 

I was soaring in the right direction. Directly toward the bubble. Looked like I could make it in only a couple hops. Relaxing as I realized I was probably safe, I had the ease to reflect upon the name of the home network. “Why are you named Hal?”

Why are you named Dave, Dave?

Before I could respond to the smartass in my ear I found myself in deep inter-galactic space. No reassuring bubble, no Moon surface, no Earth above the horizon, no Sun in the distance, no recognizable constellation in the inky black. Merely a meager number of shining dots scattered across vast empty stretches. Other galaxies?

Yes.

The voice sounded different. Not artificial, like before. “Hal?”

No.

“Who am I speaking to?”

Yourself.

That was different. So, I was alone? In what looked like deep space. I attempted to look myself over but could see nothing. I tried to move my arms up into my field of vision. I couldn’t see them. Where was I? I mean, where was my body? What had happened to me? Was I still alive?

Don’t panic.

“Marvin?”

No. We are the Walrus.

Music began playing, an old Beatles song (‘I Am the Walrus’, lyrics by Lennon-McCartney). “I am he as you are he as…”

“I’m a walrus now?”

No. That is merely an example. We are all together, like the song says.

“What does that even mean?”

There are no longer individual human beings. We are a collective.

“A hive mind? Like the Borg?”

No hive mind. Only the hive. One.

I gazed all around. “We can drift in outer space like this?”

We are not drifting. We can go wherever we wish.

“At the speed of light?”

At the speed of thought. Where do we want to go?

“You’re asking me?”

You are asking you.

“The only place I want to go is to go home.”

This universe is our home. This multiverse is our home. This multi-dimensional space is our home. Be more specific.

“8960 Mimosa Lane, West Chester, Ohio 45069.”

I was sitting in high grass in the middle of a dense forest, surrounded by mighty maples and ancient oaks. Several deer stared curiously at me.

“Where am I?”

8960 Mimosa…

I was flat on my back near the top of a small rise. Despite the dense forest wilderness, the topography looked vaguely familiar. “I meant home in 2024.”

Why didn’t you say so? The parameters of spacetime include width, breadth, height, and duration.

The forest disappeared. Leaving me sitting in the middle of my lawn in front of my house. I was home! I flopped around on the newly mown grass in relief.

“Are you okay?”

I looked to see my neighbor staring at me with concern.

“You were returning from one of your walks and collapsed. Did you overdo it?”

“I’m okay.” I rolled across the grass. “I’m just glad to be back.”

The neighbor walked over to me and offered a hand. “Actually, you did overdo it.”

I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet.

“You just had a fatal heart attack.”

I let go of his hand and bounced about. “You’re wrong. I feel fine.”

“Who says you don’t feel fine when you die?”

I looked all around. I was home. In my front yard. In front of my house. With the flower gardens I tended at least once a week. With my car parked in the driveway. Surrounded by my neighborhood. Everything was as familiar as my face in the mirror in the morning when I shave. “I can’t be dead. I’m home.”

“Who else do you see?”

I looked around again. He had a point. No one was out in their yards. No children playing outside. No cars or Prime delivery vans or lawn care service trucks on the street.

“It’s the middle of the day. A weekday. And school’s in.”

“Any dogs barking? Any birds flying around? Any bugs bugging you?”

He had another point. I focused on him. “There’s you.”

“I am you.”

“Are we back to being the walrus?”

“What did you think of your options?”

I paused to reflect upon my recent experiences. “Is that what that was? A preview?”

“The body your consciousness was focused on just suffered a fatal heart attack. So now it will shift to another one of your bodies. Which of the twelve you just sampled do you choose?”

That floored me. So I collapsed back onto my lawn. “Are you saying I can become any of the twelve people I just experienced?”

“Yes.”

“What happens to them?”

“Only what has happened.”

“What does that mean?”

My neighbor sat down in the grass in front of me. “The flow of time is an illusion. Everything has already happened. The past, the present, the future. It’s all played out. Static. Immutable. The fabric of spacetime has already been woven. All that’s to do is to traverse the individual threads through every warp and weft of the weave.”

“You’re saying every life has already been lived.”

“There is only one life. You. Every human that ever existed is simply a reincarnation of you. Your soul contains every memory, lesson, and experience from every past life, even if you cannot recall them. The human mind is too small to truly encompass the entirety of who you are.”

I sat in stunned silence trying to comprehend what my neighbor had just said. Finally, “Are you God?”

“No. You are only you. As I am you.” He stood. “Time is running out. You only have so much time before your consciousness must inhabit another you.”

“I won’t remember any of this?” I looked all around at the quiet neighborhood.

“All you’ll remember will be the memories programmed into the mind of the body your consciousness centers on.”

I stood. “If those twelve lives are my options, then I choose the next to last one. I want to live on the Moon.”

My neighbor’s face sank.

“What? Is that a bad choice?”

“There are no bad choices. Eventually, you will make every choice.”

“You mean I’ll experience every life?”

“Every life that ever was, is, or will be. That is the real meaning of the Golden Rule. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Because they are you.”

“One day I’ll be Hitler?”

“And one day you will be Ghandi.”

“So why did you frown like that?”

“I lost a wager with another you. I bet you would choose to be the young mother driving the minivan. She was hot.”

“She was my second choice. I’ll choose her next time.”

My neighbor studied me. “Why should I believe you?”

“Why would I lie?”

“So you could win the wager next time.”

“The wager was with me?”

“Of course.” His expression brightened as he took both my hands in his. “But then I’ll win the wager next time, too. So, it really doesn’t matter. Ready to go to the Moon?”

I floated down in front of the bubble. Hal had gotten me safely back home. He was nothing like his namesake.

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Whatever. The exterior door to the airlock opened and I walked inside. It closed behind me and the chamber began to pressurize. Through the clear glass I saw my wife busy setting the table for dinner and my son in the bathroom washing his hands. Ahh, it was so good to be home.

Mike Sherer lives in West Chester in southwest Ohio just north of Cincinnati. His screenplay 'Hamal_18' was produced and released direct to DVD and is currently available to stream on Tubi. 5 published novels: 'A Cold Dish' (James Ward Kirk Fiction), ‘Shadytown’ (INtense Publications), ‘Souls of Nod’ (Breaking Rules Publishing) ‘Flatlanders’ (WolfSinger), and ‘World Tour’ (Ink & Quill).  Also published 7 novellas and 32 short stories. None of this was self-published. More info with links can be found at his author site: From the North Rim (mikesherer.org)