The Chair (Chap: 1-2) (standard:science fiction, 2999 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Feb 23 2012	Views/Reads: 4791/1947	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Tom Schofield is grieving the loss of his wife, a best selling author. He moves around the house, perpetually mumbling to himself and, he believes, is on the edge of insanity.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


“You leaving for work now.” It wasn't a question. He didn't ask
questions anymore. 

“Pretty much. Maybe when I'm gone you'll eat this breakfast, Dad.” 

He doesn't respond, just collects the plate with the omelette that is
getting cold and tips it into the trash bin and stands with his back to 
me, having made his point, looking out the window. The yellow laced 
curtains tied back at the window match the towels and the decorative 
bone china cups that I remembered shuddered and chinked in their 
saucers whenever an earthquake was felt. I'm guessing there are no 
longer tears welling in the back of his eyes as he stares out across 
the bluff to the Pacific Ocean, just the memories, and a staring 
dullness of a man looking at Christmas waiting on the horizon. It is 
the pained look of someone who has taken a bullet in the gut, but this 
particular someone is my father and I don't know how to help him 
understand that we are all grieving our loss. 

“Okay, Dad. Philip is coming at the weekend. He's bringing Holly and
Luke. I think they will stay the night, he's tried to call you.” 

“The phone's down.” 

“Okay, well you know now. Your grandkids miss you, Dad.” 

“They miss their Grandma, not me.” 

“That's not true, Dad, not true at all.” 

“Close the gate, you forgot last week.” His words bounce off the window.


I three-point-turn my ten year old Ford 150, previously my elder
brother's, before marriage and the twins became a bigger 
responsibility, with raised suspension, and fat deeply treaded tires, 
and drive away from the ranch style house between wind swept Cyprus 
trees lining the drive before stepping down from the cab to close the 
white fenced gate. It hasn't been easy, the father I know and love 
isn't himself. Driving through the town of Mendocino I recall how much 
my mother loved and adored him. They married in Reno, having run away 
together: ‘...for sheer excitement,' mother told me, ‘and because I 
loved him so much I couldn't wait to make arrangements and do all that 
fussiness. I just wanted him to be mine.' And so he was until January 
11th 2011, when a moment of teenage carelessness took her from us all. 

Before driving off I check my cell phone for a signal. It's faint. I
finger in my brother's number. 

“Hey, Philip, it's Ken.” 

“Thanks for calling, how is he?” 

“The same...” I want to report something more positive but these words
are easiest and true. 

“Did he say why he's not taking mine or Jill's calls?” 

“The phone's been down.” 

“Every day for two weeks the phone is down? He's not the only one
suffering.” 

Mother had left their home after making a birthday visit to see the
grandchildren on their birthdays. Philip would always make sure she 
left for home while it was still daylight, fearing the winding Pacific 
Highway that snaked its way up from Bodega, with steep drops off the 
roadside, but on this particular day she insisted on staying longer. It 
was dark when she left. 

“He knows you're coming at the weekend. I told him the twins miss him
and are asking after him.” 

“And...?” 

I hesitate to answer. 

“Well...he said they didn't miss him so much as they miss their
Grandma.” 

“Typical, it's all about him these days.” 

Loving my brother as I do, I'm painfully aware that he carries in his
heart some inexplicable guilt. 

“He's lost, Philip. I've heard him talking to himself, having
conversations with strangers. I can't explain it.” 

“Well I'm glad he's talking to someone!” 

“I've got to get on the road. I'm sure the children will get through to
him. Just don't expect too much, okay?” 

“It's been six months since he's seen the twins.” He finishes, in
resentful tone. 

“Take care. Love to you all.” 

It's a four-hour drive to San Francisco; time in which old
recriminations will sully the memories. Dad had never been an overly 
doting father. We were never in doubt about his love for us, never 
questioned his instructions, but his real love, his total commitment, 
his inspiration in life was our mother. Sure, he taught us to fish, to 
sail, but he also taught us that the real value of any outcome is 
sustained only by the effort that was put into it. I found these 
lessons to be as invaluable as they are simple. And while I didn't 
quite understand them growing up, I can see now the wisdom behind my 
dad's principles and how his lessons shaped me as a person and how they 
will continue to form and shape my adulthood. ‘To be a father is to be 
a leader and a servant at the same time' he used to tell me. Right now 
Dad has lost his way alone. 

2 

Tom Schofield re-enters the study. As a retired physicist his work had
been mostly involved with the study of the natural world, from the 
tiniest subatomic particles to the largest galaxies. It had been a life 
career of experiments to discover the laws of nature; what things are 
made of and how things behave, and he was especially well respected in 
his study of energy and how it changes from one form to another. But 
for the last six months Tom Schofield has only been thinking about 
Einstein's theory of gravity, the laws of physics suggesting that time 
travel to the past is possible in principle. But to see whether time 
travel to the past can actually be realized he may have to learn new 
laws of physics! At least, that's what I think. 

Look at him, disheveled, mumbling, and for as long as I've been here
this appears to be normal. That would be six months, or since the day 
he finally found the courage to sit in her chair, Katherine's chair; 
the chair at which I was born. My name is Bart. I don't yet have a 
surname, she never gave me one. I'm incomplete. And I'm not the only 
one. He does this, looks at the chair, touches it, leans on it, even 
twirls it around, but it takes him a while to find the courage to sit 
in it. Don't worry, he can't hear me, and when he finally finds the 
courage to sit in her chair he will think I'm a voice in his head! 
That's a sad fact when you consider he's a physicist. He's supposed to 
know about people like me. Factual people, yes, people like Tom are 
factual people who — for various reasons — try to fix the past or 
escape into the future. He has never worked it out, or any of those 
other geniuses, but Katherine did, she worked out what happens when 
universes actually diverge but, bless her creative mind, she didn't 
notice the kinks in our path. I'm a fictional character, and there are 
quite a few of us living in Tom's parallel universe. 

“Oh, hey, you're back!” I say, seeing Tom settle deeply into the deep
red leather chair where he swivels to look out the window. “I'm not out 
there, Tom. I'm in here.” 

“No, no I assure you, you are not in here.” He responds, no longer
afraid he will be overheard. 

“Oh really, we're going to work through all this again?” 

“Look, unless you are some super-advanced alien civilization that has
figured this out, we aren't affected by the possible existence of other 
universes,” Tom answers. “Anyway, it's impossible with what we know 
today that lets one universe communicate with another.” 

“Wow! That's impressive; little wonder why Katherine couldn't share my
story with you.” 

“What damn story?” 

“I don't know what it's called, she hadn't decided.” 

“How convenient!” 

“You're conversing, aren't you, you acknowledge I exist.” 

“Sure, in my head, going crazy. So screwed up I cannot let my
grandchildren see me this way, or hold a  civil or caring tongue toward 
my boys, scared they think I'm going insane!” 

“Look, Tom, here's the deal. I need to be completed. I need to be set
free to hide on bookshelves before being found long enough to enter 
into people's hearts.” 

“Oh really, is that so. Well I need my wife back, so it looks like we'll
both be disappointed, right!” 

“She cannot come back, Tom. But what she imagined, all her fictional
friends, we can become real. We can be completed. We can be in your 
universe.” 

“Ah ha, so you admit you're not real?” He says, leaning back in the
chair, staring at the ceiling. 

“I never said I was real, I said I was incomplete.” 

“You think I'm complete anymore? I'm no more complete than you are!” 

“No, Tom, you're not. That's why we can help each other?” 

“We? Please...please... don't tell me there are more of you!” He puts
his head in his hands. “This surely isn't happening to me.” 

“Tom, you've got to look past the details of a wonky group of genius
scientists – Katherine worked out that a quantum state is now 
observable with the human eye – and just consider its implications for 
a moment: It means that an object you can see in front of you may exist 
simultaneously in a parallel universe — she made real the plaything of 
science fiction writers that's had scientists theorizing for thousands 
of years.” 

“For someone incomplete you sure know a lot about my wife!” 

“I know about my creator, Tom. That's all.” 

“And that's something else; I don't get this incomplete thing?” He leans
forward, swivels the chair to face the desk and places his hands flat 
on the desk as though I was his reality on the other side. “You can 
hear me perfectly. Correct?” 

“I can hear me talking to myself.” And his voice fades to a mumble of
frustration. 

“Imagine you had a creative mind and you had to describe the voice
you're hearing, would you see me then?” 

“I'm a physicist, not a painter or a writer. My creative mind is
non-existent. I work with the law of physics.” 

“I'll admit this is a problem. But you'd be working with a skeleton
draft. It's not as though you have to start with nothing.” 

“We've been batting this thing back and forwards for six months now, and
I'm still no clearer on what you're implying. What I know is that I'm 
going crazy without her, she was my heart, my communication with the 
children, my passion, my love and all I'm left with is a disturbing 
voice in my head.” 

“Could I not be the voice that is speaking to your heart, Tom, is that
not possible?” 

“What the hell do they call you again?” He asks. 

“Bart...I'm pretty sure Katherine was going to call me Bartholomew,
after Bartholomew Cubbins.” 

“That was the boy's favorite story. How weird I should think of that.” 

“Maybe you didn't,” I reply. “Look, let me talk in terms you understand.
Let's say you're back in Scotland, visiting the home of your parents. 
But in another universe, Tom, where your atomic particles just can't 
keep up, you're actually still at home here in California. That may 
sound far-fetched, but it's based on real science.” 

“Not any real science I'm aware of. You're talking about splitting the
universe into two parts, but how can there be multiple universes yet we 
can see only one of them?” His back straightens, and his eyes widen as 
the complex puzzle stimulates his brain cells. 

“Katherine knew how, Tom. She worked out in her imagination that any
observed action in one universe freezes the other.  You see a football, 
well you understand soccer, right, and so imagine a soccer ball flying 
through the air, but maybe in a second universe the soccer ball hasn't 
been kicked yet. It won't be kicked until you're looking the other way. 
Katherine is no longer observing me.” 

He thinks for a moment. 

“That would mean it all comes down to how we understand time. We don't
exactly feel time — we perceive its passing. Even as a physicist I 
don't understand why time moves fast on a rollercoaster and very slow 
during a dull college lecture. It races when you're late for work . . . 
but the last few minutes before quitting time seem like hours.” Tom is 
no longer mumbling. “But take into consideration theories that look at 
the level of quantum fields ... particles that travel both forward and 
backward in time. If we leave out the forward-and-backwards-in-time 
part, we miss out on some of the physics.” 

“Wasn't there some guy studying physics who said....wait, let me quote
him: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge...'” 

“Very funny. You're quoting Einstein.” 

“No, Tom, Katherine quoted Einstein!” 

“Why should I believe she understood such things?” He asks, his voice
rising. 

“You too have the power to understand and believe and the solution is
right at your fingertips.” 

“I do...how?” 

“It's called a mouse, Tom. It's the gateway to creativity. When you're
ready, just move it. But, Tom, if you choose to move it you'd better be 
prepared to get creative!” 

I want to explain more, but Tom rises out of the chair. Creativity to a
man like Tom Schofield is like him trying to explain the workings of an 
Almighty's non-existence to the Pope.  This isn't going to be easy. 


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