Meetings With a Familiar Face

An idea I had to write down became the beginning of a story. I am not sure where will I go with this yet, but so far I like it so I thought I will share. Feedback appreciated, as always.

So, here it is, hope you'll enjoy...



I looked in her eyes and I knew I could have sex with this woman tonight, even though this was only our second date. We were in my favorite restaurant only a few minutes from my house. The food we had was great as always and the wine did the trick. We were relaxed, I was funny and she was interesting. We could feel the spark between us through the whole date. But I also knew it will not happen tonight.

Every Tuesday at ten o’clock in the evening I had to be in the basement of my house for a meeting with three others. I could never talk to anyone about these weekly get togethers, not to my friends nor my family. Not because anything sinister or illegal happens at these meetings, but because no one would ever believe me.

The three other people in my basement on those evenings are me, and I am them. They don’t live in my imagination, not made out of fantasy, but from different universes that run alongside with my reality. We are not sure how many parallel universes are there. We think the number could be infinite, but so far only four of us have been connected.

It started exactly two years ago, in August, a quite summer night. I was single enjoying life to the fullest. I just purchased my first home, a house with three rooms a backyard, and a huge basement. Located close to the center of a small town but far enough to be a peaceful neighbourhood. I was only thirty years old and suddenly a home owner. The money was not an issue as I was a recipient of a well sized insurance check due to an accident last year, where I was hit by a car and I was clinically dead for twenty two minutes. I fully recovered and the insurance money was enough to buy this house, and then some. Small things had to be fixed and one of them was the boiler in the basement. This was way overdue, I lived without hot water since I moved in a few weeks ago. I went to my kitchen, grabbed a soda from the fridge and headed down, where the boiler was kept.

I had all the tools and parts I would need for this job and I couldn’t wait to get to it. I reached and grabbed the water valve and started to turn it off, when the light behind me on the ceiling started to flicker. As I turned around to look at the bulb, suddenly everything went mute. What I heard before as background noise, the neighbor's dog barking, the night time insects, my television set upstairs with a movie on, all were gone, giving place to deep silence not a sound anywhere. Then a humming noise something electric. It grew louder coming from nowhere and everywhere in the same time. It almost felt like it’s coming from inside of me. I turned my head around try to locate the source but I couldn’t. It came from everywhere. Then the humming stopped and all normal noise came back.

Simultaneously a small very bright dot appeared front of me in the air about eight feet away. Then one appeared to my left, and one to my right also eight feet from me in both direction. I thought I am hallucinating when all three dots started to grew and became small circles first then bigger and bigger until they were about six feet in diameter. It happened so fast, by the time I was able to process what was happening, I could see through those circles like a doorway. I looked at the one front of me first then turned left and turned right, and what I saw didn’t make any sense. In all three circles there was a person, standing on the other side looked just like me. Dressed differently but their face was the exact copy of mine. Same height and judging by the look, about the same weight.

I felt my heart beat so fast like it wanted to jump out of my chest. Panic slowly set in, as fear from the unknown took over my mind. The one in the circle front of me raised his hand like a friendly hello and smiled.

‘Calm down’, he said, ‘We are not going to hurt you’.

His voice was familiar and it took me a second to recognize. It was my own voice I heard so many times on records. I always found it funny how alien my own voice sounds when listening to it from those recordings, but now this familiarity somehow calmed me down. My fear changed into curiosity and disbelief. I knew I am not hallucinating as the situation was way too vivid, very real.

‘What…what is this?’ I asked, ‘Who are you, what is going on?’

I looked at the other two circles, just to see my face looking back to me from both sides, calmly but also curiously. I noticed each of their background were different. The one front of me looked like a laboratory, on my left he was standing in a forest while the one on my right was in a similar but slightly different basement like mine.

‘Technically we are you, and you are us’ the one front of me answered.

‘We are the same, but we live in other universes, parallel to yours’ he said. He was speaking in such an easy going manner like this was all natural.

‘I created a machine a while ago. It can open windows to other realities. So far you are the third I could locate, so we are four now.’ he started to explain.

‘Well how many of us there?’ I asked.

‘Hard to say’ he said, ‘there could be only four of us or could be an infinite amount. I could only contact three of you so far. It has to do something with death and coming back from it. You died sometimes ago and came back, am I right?’ he asked looking at me waiting for confirmation.

‘Well yes, I had an accident last year, I was basically dead for over twenty minutes, then they brought me back’ I answered, ‘but how could you know this?’

‘I didn’t, my machine told me. Every time one of us dies and somehow comes back to life my machine gives me a coordinate. I call this the “wake up call”. Like I said, so far there are only three of you I found’ he explained.

‘By the way this is John and the one to your right is Walter’ he said pointing to the circles, ‘and my name is Pete. What is your name?’ he asked.

‘My name is Derek’ I said, confused. ‘I thought we are all the same? How come we have different names?’ I asked.

‘Not at all’, he said. ‘I am on the very beginning of this research but I already learned few things. Only part of our genes is the same, the part responsible for our looks. That’s why we look identical. Everything else is slightly or majorly different. We all live different lives and our actions cause different reactions. These reactions lead us to different life events and those events form our lifeline. The only thing all four of us did at the same time was being born.

‘How about you’? I turned to Walter. ‘How are you here? Did you build a machine as well?’

‘No’ he replied, ‘It is Pete’s machine. It opens a window for all of us once our coordinates are stored in. It will open always at the same time and at the same place on Tuesdays, at ten o’clock in the evening, on every fourth week. The machine needs four weeks to recharge’, Walter said.

‘Please remember this information as it is very important. If we miss you twice in the row, we will assume you are dead or compromised otherwise, and your coordinates will be deleted from the machine’s memory for good’, Pete said looking at me with a serious face.

My own face. It was slightly difficult to cope with the situation. I was still in a mild shock, even though my curiosity grew by the minute. I moved a step closer to Pete, than one more when he stopped me.

‘Stay there’, he said, raising his hand. ‘We can’t cross over.

‘Yeah that’s true, I tried’, John said, showing his right hand to me. I could see his thumb, but where four other fingers were supposed to be, only four very short stubs remained.

‘Fortunately I tried to touch him first’. He said with some sadness in his voice. ‘The field cut my fingers off as soon I reached in’.

‘We can’t cross over’, Pete repeated. ‘So far what I know is this; if you cross over to any other reality, your own will cease to exist immediately. You will be stuck and there will be nothing to go back to. Anything you do in that new universe will change the timeline not only for you but for the original you from that timeline’, he explained. ‘My machine somehow knows this, and as a defense it would not let anything through. John was too quick and I couldn’t stop him in time.’

Walter looked at his watch then looked at Pete. ‘It’s time’, he said.

Pete nodded and pulled out a small flat device from his pocket.

‘Thirty seconds left’, he said and looked at me again. ‘We have only five minutes every time. I am working on it, trying to find a better energy source for longer periods. This window will open again in four weeks. Don’t forget, be here! Take care all of you!’ he shouted.

Suddenly all three circles started to shrink rapidly into a bright spot, and then all three dots disappeared into thin air. I was left alone in my basement, and the only thing reminded me of what happened was the strong smell of ozone still lingered around.


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