McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [106]
I slowly understood that I was in my bedroom watching myself sleep. The clock face was a red blur. I could direct my consciousness about the room like aiming a stream of light one photon at a time. I was an unseen packet of cognizant information capable of motion in any direction. I aimed my awareness to the hall beyond the closed door, which I passed through easily, not even sensing molecular friction, and I understood that the door existed no more or less than I did. This was a world without borders. I reentered my room and watched my corporeal self stir on the bed. A brassiere lay on the floor and I suddenly knew that I had a girlfriend, but I was also still married.
I moved my synapses to my writing desk, where the manuscript of my ghost story sat neatly stacked. I became aware of changes within the manuscript. The story was not yet complete but was longer, with greater detail and a different opening than the one I’d been working on for a month. In a sudden rush of intuition, I knew everything I had already written. Then I realized that I already knew that. My cognition expanded in every direction as if peering into an infinite number of mirrors that reflected each other endlessly.
My bedroom grew indistinct at the edges, losing its sense of reality, the walls simultaneously expanding and contracting. As I felt my awareness begin to fade, I directed perception to the figure on the bed and for the briefest possible moment my own eyes opened but I was gone.
Chuck’s face was magnified by the glass lid, distorted into a caricature of itself. He pressed tiny keys on a handheld computer to open the lid. Warm air hissed across my body as the lid lifted.
“What’s my name?” he said. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“Chuck, Chris, the lab. I need paper and pencil.”
He hurried away and I sat, dangling my legs off the table. I could feel the memory of future knowledge moving away from me like concentric circles spreading from a rock thrown into a pond. Chuck gave me a lab book and I quickly wrote all the changes in the story that my mind had gleaned in the bucket.
“What is this?” Chuck said. “Your handwriting is worse than Gell-Mann’s.”
“It’s a revision of my story.”
“How could you read it?”
“I didn’t. I just knew what I’d written.”
“A form of telepathy?”
“No, I was aware of my physical self sleeping at the time. It’s hard to explain. Just being there made me know what my life was like.”
“Were you in the future?”
“I don’t know. I had a girlfriend. But I was still married. That couldn’t be my future since I’m divorced now.”
“That proves you entered the bucket. Each strand of the mop is a reality that is occurring simultaneously. You moved laterally in time rather than forward or backward.”
“You mean every mop string is different?”
“Perhaps. They might be interwoven. Maybe each point where a string touches another makes for a commonality in both realities.”
“What about now, Chuck? You and me talking?”
“Just another mop string.”
“I want to go back.”
“It might not be safe.”
“I’m going in, Chuck. It was nirvana. Glory, rapture, paradise. Pure bliss. I don’t have that in my life. Maybe I never did.”
“All right, Chris.”
“Besides, I have to finish my story.”
For the next twelve hours, Chuck dunked me into time’s bucket, where I followed a different strand of reality. Each journey slid my mind into the same zone of unfettered awareness as before. It was as if I’d lived for years in a house with utter and intimate knowledge of its architecture, wiring, ductwork, floor creaks and window squeaks, then suddenly discovered an extra room previously unknown to me, bathed in gorgeous light. I now wanted