Close a door, open a window ... or "Untitled of yet"

She picked a dandelion from the uncropped grass, twirling the stalk between her fingertips.

“You don’t, you couldn’t begin to understand what or who I am,” she said. Her eyes flickered up to meet his gaze, held the look with veiled pain behind the gray blues. She raised the flower to her lips and gently blew, scattering the spores on the soft wind.

“Every possibility, every road we didn’t take is a seed. A gentle breeze - it could be an earthquake at 3 a.m., a common cold, a motorcycle ride on a rainy night; they’re all a single representation of infinite possibilities. Every breath removes a few more spores until all that is left is the root idea of what could have been – dead and lifeless in some child’s hands.”

She tossed the empty stalk away and kicked at it with the tip of her paint-stained chucks. He stared at the awkward movement of her feet, her toes pinching inwards, digging the stem harshly into the ground. He looked up at the sharp intake of her breath.

“On one of those spores,” she whispered, “we didn’t always hate each other; we were friends for ten years. On another, you went to MIT straight from high school and ended up being my TA. One I went to Northwestern instead and we only met by chance at some greasy spoon in New York waiting for a conference. There are only about twenty percent where we haven’t met yet. But we will, I don't know whether by chance or design.”

A sly smile suddenly flashed across her pale face and she looked up at him with her crooked grin.

“Do you want to hear about the world where you and Steve …”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he stammered, shifting his weight uncomfortably in her silence.

“Ok, well on one world you have moobs, one world I have a cock. One world I died of Polio at five. One world you … you were in a motorcycle crash on the way to our rehearsal dinner about three years ago. Simple, small events yet everything is so different. Everything is floating on the wind, waiting to settle in a thousand different locations. Everything produces the same result - more weeds, more spores, more chances, and more regrets.”

She glanced at her watch, fidgeting with the band the way she always used to do in the lab waiting for the program to run. She always had a problem with waiting.

“In about 90 seconds an ambulance and 3 fire trucks are going to go by, there was a fire a few blocks over and –“ she was interrupted by the sound of wailing sirens.

“Guess you were a little off on the timing,” he muttered, “so what does that mean? You can tell the future? Travel through time? If you're theory is right, IF there are thousands of other worlds, how can one spore see where another is floating?”

“I told you that you couldn’t understand. I’m not from a spore. I’m from the stalk, the root, the original. And every time I find you again, but it is never the same. You … we’re never the same. And so far every version of us I’ve gone to ends … badly.”

“You’re telling me we always end up meeting , we always affect each other in some way. But you’re the only you I’ve met. Are you trying to tell me you have a clone somewhere out there, that we’ll meet and bad things will happen? Do you really expect me to believe that every relationship with you ends that way”

“ yes.”

“why?”

“it isn’t that simple-“

“You’re a scientist, give me proof.”

“… statistical analysis predicting future events based on past findings. And current.”

“current?”

“that fire. I … the me from this spore … she just died. The experiment created a feedback loop that just happened to travel into my, well HER, kitchen. The house burned down. I – she – was electrocuted. You caused it. Your experiment was enough to count as contact with her on this world. And it ended … very badly. Enough proof?”