She immediately takes charge of the situation, asks the doctors to excuse us so we can talk as a family, tells my dad and my mom—who, to repeat, is alive—to take a seat. And my parents do what she says, cowed, squeezing together on the threadbare orange couch under the window, while Greta—who, to repeat, is my sister—leans against the wall by my bed, arms crossed, brow knit, and asks me to repeat my story.
So, with as much lucidity as I can muster—considering I’m in a reality that shouldn’t exist talking to a sister that was never born while my dead mom holds hands with my dad, something I never once saw them do in my entire life—I explain what happened. Greta listens, nods, doesn’t interrupt. But about halfway through my story, her brow unknits and her lips press together like she’s trying hard not to smile. Which starts to piss me off. But I press on, describing the events that occurred in Goettreider’s lab on July 11, 1965, and how they resulted in me turning up here, with them, instead of where I should be, there, without them.
When I finish, Greta looks me in the eye and bursts out laughing. She turns to my confused and worried parents, holding hands on the orange couch.
“Guys,” she says, “it’s his novel.”
60
My mom and dad have no idea what my sister is talking about.
“You don’t remember those stories he used to write as a kid?” Greta says. “About how he lived in, like, the future or whatever? And those drawings he’d do, you know, the weird buildings with all the swirls? Flying cars, robots, jet packs, that kind of crap?”
“Of course we remember,” my mom says. “But what does that have to do with a novel?”
“I guess it was a few months ago,” Greta says, “he told me he found a bunch of his old stories and drawings and thought they’d make a good book or even a movie or something. He said he was going to write it and ask that producer to read it. You know, the one who commissioned the house in Malibu?”
“We saw that producer’s last movie,” my dad says, “the one that won the Golden Globe. It got the science all wrong. I mean, I had half a mind to write the man and explain that the actual science is fascinating and you don’t need to gussy it up with all that nonsense to make the plot work.”
“Focus, honey,” my mom says.
“Sorry,” says my dad.
“I’m still not sure I understand,” my mom says. “When did he write a book?”
“I don’t think he did,” Greta says. “But what he just said, that whole time-travel thing, that’s the plot of his novel. When he told me about it, I figured he was joking. Because, I mean, like he has time to write a book. But, whatever, the point is, whether or not he actually wrote it, he hasn’t had a schizoid break or something. He just got a little screwy and mixed up real life with his story idea. He’s going to be okay.”
My mom and dad look at Greta with gratitude. They’re still holding hands.
I’m propped up in the hospital bed, frustrated, insulted, annoyed, because I know she’s wrong, it’s not a goddamn plot—it’s my life.
Except, I mean, what if she’s right? Am I so sure of myself because I’m correct . . . or because my brain’s gone wonky for as yet undetermined reasons and my reality principle is in stupendous existential flux?
“Hey, idiot, snap out of it,” Greta says. “I have a date tonight.”
61
Apparently, my name is John Barren. Apparently, I have the same birth date, October 2, 1983. Apparently, I’m an architect.
I finished my master’s degree in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology five years ago, did a postgraduate year at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and got a job at a top firm in Amsterdam. I contributed to a variety of projects around the world, including that producer’s house in Malibu, an office building in Kuala Lumpur, another office building in Boston, a ski resort in Switzerland, a bank tower in Singapore, and a convention center in Dubai.
Nine months ago, the firm was approached to do a condo tower in Toronto, my hometown. After clashing with my bosses over the design, I made what sounds like a super-rash decision to quit and go out on my own. For reasons I don’t understand but that supposedly involved an impassioned speech to the board of directors of the development company about how this tower won’t redefine just the Toronto skyline but the way the world understands what a building can be, launching a new vanguard of modern architecture—I have no idea what any of that means—I was given full control of the condo project and returned to Toronto six months ago to open my own firm. I quickly booked several high-profile commissions, hired a bunch of junior associates with slim-fit black clothing and eccentric eyewear, and have been the subject of several fawning media profiles on my visionary design philosophy.
This is madness because I don’t know a goddamn thing about architecture.
Except, impossibly, I do. Tumbling around my brain are years of studying and considering and experimenting and failing and failing and failing and coming up with something not totally horrible and failing and failing and failing and glancing on a not completely embarrassing notion and failing and failing and failing and failing and then achieving a minor success and then achieving a slightly less minor success and then clearly descending into narcissistic self-delusion by striking out on my own with some hazy but confidently articulated pronouncements on the future of architecture.
Still, I must be a total sham because how could I—who never had an original thought or created anything of value, who only ever disappointed and underwhelmed—accomplish anything other than unpredictable new ways to screw up not just my own life and the lives of those I love, but the fundamental integrity of the space-time continuum.
And then I see some photos of the buildings I worked on. And I get it.
After I’m released from the hospital, I insist my mom and dad and sister take me to the building site where I collapsed. It’s a big square hole in the ground with a poured foundation and the first few stories framed in steel. Inside the on-site trailer, there’s a detailed model of the building-to-be and I stare at it for a long time. Because it’s the way things are supposed to be. It looks like home.
Whatever contradictory memories are surging through my mind, I know I’m Tom Barren, from the real 2016—but John Barren is in me too, his memories and thoughts and preferences and opinions sticking to my own memories and thoughts and preferences and opinions like the gunky residue on your skin after you peel off a bandage.
By the way, I only know that because I pulled off the bandage that was on the crook of my elbow, covering the spot from which they drew blood—where I come from, trying to protect a wound with a piece of adhering fabric would seem cluelessly vintage.
But I’m starting to understand. Until this afternoon, when my consciousness somehow seized control, John’s consciousness was the dominant one. I—me, Tom—was in there too, tucked away like a bill in the pocket of a pair of jeans that went through the laundry, another analogy that would’ve made no sense to me before I found myself in a place where clothes are made of processed vegetation or animal hide, instead of recombinant molecules.