Maggie stood, alone, in a blue room with no doors she could see. This room held a certain familiarity, and yet felt alien all the same.
She felt a little scared, but moreover, she felt bored. This space was so empty, so devoid of any stimulation that she thought she might lose her mind. Just this piercing, endless blue.
Then, a noise. A door suddenly opened in the wall, with a silhouette lit from behind.
The figure stepped in, and Maggie’s heart jumped to her throat as she saw another version of herself, holding a colourful, flashing device in her hand.
“You need to get out of here,” said the figure, her voice full of vitriol. She was scowling.
“I can’t…” Maggie replied, gesturing around the room. “I’m trapped.”
“I didn’t invite you,” the double said. “Are you some kind of reverse Houdini?”
Now Maggie was in a jail cell. Steel bars separated her and the double.
The double tapped on her device, and spoke with a new voice: Ziggy’s voice. “There’s a ninety-three per cent chance you are going to die if you stay here.”
“So how do I leave?”
The double was no longer holding the colourful blinking device, but a timer. She passed it to Maggie through the bars.
Maggie looked down at the display. It was at zero.
Panicking, she pressed the button to activate the vortex. Nothing happened.
“No…”
She looked up at her double, but she was no longer there.
“Hey Mags,” came a voice from behind, followed by strong arms closing around her body. Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Billy, looking at her flirtatiously. “Have you been avoiding me? Is that any way to treat your husband?”
“Get off me,” Maggie said, panic rising in her chest.
Billy grabbed her wrists forcefully, and pulled on them, sending her off-balance. She fell to the ground, and hit her head on a metal surface that had not been there a second ago.
Glancing up in panic, she was startled to realise that Billy was gone, and the pressure she felt on her wrists was her own handcuffs, attached to the wall of Billy’s shed.
The world fell into darkness as she started to feel a spider crawling on her exposed leg.
“I thought I was your husband,” said a voice.
“Stephen?”
The sound of his wheelchair approached her, though she couldn’t see a thing. She felt anxiety about his presence, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Who was that man?”
“Billy… I dated him in high school.”
“And you married him?”
“Yeah, but I divorced him.”
“I thought you married me,” came yet another voice. It was Quinn.
“I… did… I think?” Maggie said, feeling altogether panicked about this situation.
How many people was she married to? Why did she only recall one divorce? And if she had three husbands, why did she feel so alone?
“Can someone get me out of these handcuffs?”
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“You need to ask Higgins,” Uncle Sam’s voice whispered into her ear.
“Who?”
She strained to recall who or what a ‘Higgins’ could be.
“It’s the computer, you idiot,” she heard her own voice barking.
I thought the computer was called Ziggy…
Maggie was so confused. She didn’t know what she knew.
“Maggie?”
She closed her eyes.
Shut up…
“Maggie, are you okay?”
Just leave me alone.
The hand on her shoulder nudged her gently.
“Wake up, Maggie…”
Maggie reluctantly opened her eyes, and realised she was lying in a bed that smelled of cigarettes. She turned her head, and saw Uncle Sam standing over her.
“Hey,” Sam said, wearing a kind, but sad, smile.
“What time is it?” She asked, rubbing her eyes.
It was only a dream… right?
“It’s seven in the morning,” Sam said. He was dressed in more appropriate clothing now, though the straight cut trousers and Indian-style Nehru shirt appeared more sixties than seventies to her eyes.
“Where’d you get the threads? You look like John Lennon,” she said, smirking. The circular-lensed, yellow-tinted sunglasses he had perched on his nose seemed to complete the look.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he laughed. “Quinn and Colin ended up raiding a thrift store, since they were low on cash. It’s a few years out of style, but it’s a little better than women’s pyjamas.”
She nodded, and moved to sit up. As she became upright, a sharp pain sliced through her head, causing her to wince.
“This headache…” she said, holding her temple. “It started out a dull throbbing, but now it’s like getting stabbed with a knife.”
Sam looked grave. “That’s not a good sign.” He stood from his seat on the bed. “Once we get a hold of some money, I’ll go pick you up some acetaminophen…”
Although Sam was her uncle, Maggie nonetheless felt like he was fussing over her like a parent. Or maybe it was just his doctor side coming out. She kind of liked it. She’d never been close to her Dad; was this what it was like to have a loving father?
“I dunno if Tylenol will cut it,” she said.
“Hmm…” Sam looked pensive for a moment, before regarding her with a sheepish grin. “Ever smoked a joint?”
Maggie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Uncle Sam! I thought you were a straight edge!”
Sam was looking at his feet, bashful. “Cannabis is a relatively safe pain relief, you know? Safer than store-bought painkillers in large quantities. It’s San Francisco in 1978, so I figured… probably pretty easy to find, right?”
Maggie had heard somewhere that potheads tended to have less vivid dreams, and after what she’d just been through, that sounded terrific.
Maggie grinned. “Well, you score it, and I’ll smoke it. I’ve been much more doped up than a few puffs of the magic dragon in my time. No sweat.”
She hoped he wouldn’t press her about her drug-addled experience not so long ago, and she was pleased to see that he did not. To be honest, she barely remembered it herself.
Sam rose from the bed, and stretched.
“The others are getting us some breakfast,” he explained. That was music to Maggie’s ears; she was famished.
She climbed out of bed, squinting through the feeling that gripped her head. She couldn’t help but feel this was karmic retribution for Colin’s head pain.
Dizzily, she moved towards the bathroom, leaning against the wall as she walked. Her vision was degrading the longer she was on her feet.
“Uncle Sam…” she said, gripping the door frame. He was by her side in an instant, holding her up.
“Talk to me, what’s happening?”
“I think I’m about to faint,” she said. “My vision’s blacking out…”
“Okay, it might be low blood pressure,” he said, and gently lowered her to a sitting position on the floor.
She leaned over and, remarkably quickly, felt herself return to normal.
“Okay…” she breathed. “That was scary.”
“Rest here for a moment,” Sam said, crouching in front of her. “You’ll be alright. It was just the act of standing that did it, I think. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
He looked towards the hotel room door. “Let’s hope the others are getting you something salty.”
“I feel like an invalid,” Maggie said dryly. Sam regarded her with sympathetic eyes, and sat against the wall beside her.
“I’ve met a lot of different people in my time,” he said. “Some of them had physical disabilities, some of them had intellectual disabilities, some of them had mental illness. But you know what they all had in common? They were all worth meeting, worth knowing, and worth helping. Everyone deserves people who care about them.”
Maggie nodded, leaning on his shoulder.
“My husband…” she started, then shook her head. “Not Billy; my other husband, Stephen. He was a paraplegic. He was also one of your ilk… super smart physicist.”
She felt her eyes welling with tears. “I can barely remember his face…”
Sam wrapped an arm around her.
“That could be the ‘swiss cheese’ effect from leaping, or it could be a result of this thing that happened to you. But we’ll fix it, okay? You’ll remember him again, I promise.”
“You keep saying that, but we barely even have money for food. How are you going to work this out?”
Sam looked away, thoughtful. He licked his lips.
“Quinn made that machine in a basement with scrap parts, right? One thing I’ve learned from him is that we don’t need a big government project with billions of dollars to work things out, as nice as that would be. We just need the right equations and some elbow grease.”
Maggie nodded, smiling weakly.
I hope you can do it before I’m in unbearable agony.
“I’m ready to complete my journey to the toilet,” she said with a smirk.