Chapter 13
“Hang on,” Jenn cut in, “Was Sam a hallucination or was he really there?”
Janis chuckled, her cheeks flushing. “He was really there.”
“And he gave you magic mushrooms?” Ian said, squinting in confusion.
“What? No!” Janis said with a raised eyebrow. “He wasn’t Brad, he was Brad’s father. But at that point in my trip, I had no idea what was going on. I just saw him there, and I was convinced he was the entire reason I existed. Which, ultimately, turned out to be correct.” She locked eyes with Magic. “Isn’t that right?”
“I wasn’t aware you knew about all of that.”
Ian and Jenn stared at the two, mouths hanging open.
“What do you mean…?” Jenn asked.
“In the original history,” Janis said, crossing her arms, “My mother had my father declared dead while he was a POW. She married another man, and Dad came home from Vietnam to a broken life. My sisters and I were never born. That is, until Sam changed things.”
“And shrooms made you see the old timeline?” Ian’s eyebrows were high.
Janis shrugged. “That’s one way to interpret it. I’ve made a point never to do psychedelics again. It wasn’t exactly a positive experience for me.”
“Okay, so you saw Sam for who he was while you were tripping,” said Jenn. “What happened when you sobered up? Did you still see his face?”
Janis nodded. “It was like the spell was broken, so to speak. I couldn’t see anyone else, even as all the hallucinations cleared. Even as he started to look more like the other guy—I can’t really explain it. I was seeing the shape of Brad’s father, but it was like I could see past it. It was just Sam.”
* * *
Janis opened her eyes, finding she’d fallen asleep on the couch. Sunlight was bathing the living room. What time was it?
“Are you feeling better?” asked Sam, concern etched into his face. He was sitting forward, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped in front. “You didn’t have such a good night, did you?”
Janis stared at him, transfixed. “Uncle Sam…”
Sam frowned. “I think you’ll find my name is Owen. You were just hallucinating.” He looked away from her gaze.
Janis sat up. “No. I wasn’t.” She rubbed her eyes. “Oh my god. Where have you been since I was nine?!”
Sam was a combination of bewildered and worried. “You really… you really still see…”
Janis rubbed her eyes again and squinted. “Yeah. And I don’t really understand. Why are you Brad’s father…? How?”
“Oh boy,” Sam muttered, standing from the recliner and crossing to her. He took a seat next to her. “It’s a long story. But I need to know you’re okay first. You were in a bad state last night. What did you take?”
“Psilocybe cubensis,” she said matter-of-factly. “I did my research. It was safe to ingest.”
Sam pursed his lips. “Well, it may not have harmed you physically, but…” he held up his arm, which was covered in scratch marks from where Janis had been clinging to him the night prior.
“Sorry… I guess I had a bad trip.” She clutched her head. “It was like I’d gone back in time and found out my parents never had me. And for some reason I was sure you were keeping me in existence. That’s why I couldn’t let go of you.” She laughed. “I guess that’s pretty weird, now that I think about it.”
Then again. She recalled a thing Sam used to do with a length of string. His theory of time travel. And Sam was a genius. If anyone could have managed to go back in time and change things…
“Yeah… weird,” Sam said with a strange expression on his face. He looked out the back sliding door towards Brad’s studio. “Brad’s still sleeping. I checked up on him last night, and he was completely out of it too. You really need to be careful with drugs, Janis. Anything can go wrong.” He gestured to the pool outside. “You could have fallen in there and not known which way was up, you know?”
“I can take care of myself,” Janis said, feeling suddenly quite defensive.
Sam held up his arm. “With the way you were clawing at my arm last night, I’m not sure you’re as independent as you think.”
“You’re not gonna tell my Dad about this, are you?” she asked, recalling she’d made that request numerous times the previous night.
A look of grief passed over Sam’s face. “No, I won’t tell him. As long as you don’t tell him about me.”
“What? Why? I know he’d love to see you.”
Sam shook his head. “I can’t. I made a choice, and seeing him—I think it’ll be too hard for both of us. I gave him what he needs. That was my parting gift to him.”
* * *
“He didn’t spell it out, but I eventually worked out what he meant by ‘parting gift,’” Janis explained. “That he’d gone back and told Mom to wait a little longer for Dad to come home. And that had changed his life, and brought me into existence.”
“Damn that’s heavy,” Ian mumbled.
“So you had a pact of secrecy…” Magic said. “And then you set up the communications for him?”
“At first, I just set him up a secure email address that he could use to contact anyone he wanted,” Janis said. “Because he didn’t have a hologram any more, I figured he should still be able to bounce ideas off of somebody out there. But he had me adapt it to be much more secretive, and only to a single contact, who I still won’t name. Turned out he was worried about Lothos finding it. Even I wasn’t able to see his communications.”
She held up the notebook. “These are my only records. I get a timestamp and general location where it was accessed from, which I delete from the server after I’ve written it in here. I keep this in a secret location too and I will burn it if it comes to that.”
“For anyone else, I’d say that’s paranoid,” Jenn said, grinning. “But for you, it’s par for the course.”
“It’s a dangerous world out there for Sam,” Janis said, leaning back. “And anyone he comes to rely on. That’s why he wanted to keep me out of it as much as he could.”
Magic frowned. “Did you ever tell your father about this?”
“I did, when I heard this project was getting started.” She smiled wryly. “It only made him more determined to bring Sam home, so he could smack him one for leaving him out of it.”
“Hey, listen—I know this is largely irrelevant,” Ian interrupted, “but what had Sam leaped into Brad’s father to do?”
Janis smiled fondly. “I helped him figure out it was to help Brad come out of the closet. He’s married to Todd now, and his Dad is fully supportive.” She sighed. “The day Sam leapt out of Owen is one of the more bittersweet days of my life, because it’s the last time I ever saw him.”
“Until today,” Magic said. “How would you like a turn in the Imaging Chamber?”