Hands

Eldridge and Cramer sat on the ledge of the capitol building overlooking the city.

"Why do you carry that staff?" Cramer asked. “You’ve been especially attentive to it tonight.”

Eldridge turned his head to the left and looked at Cramer's calm expression for a moment before shifting the rest of his body to face toward him. They had been sitting with their legs over the edge, breathing in the night air; so Eldridge had to bring his legs up into a lotus position to sit up on the ledge. Cramer tried to match Eldridge's posture, turning his own body and lifting his right foot to try to get it onto his left knee. When he failed, he quickly settled for criss cross applesauce to keep from flailing around at such a height.

"Don't worry." Eldridge said. "I won't let you fall."

“I know,” Cramer let out a snicker, “this is fine.”

They sat looking at each other for a moment. Cramer's eyes were wide and a smile was teasing the sides of his lips; he was clearly excited at the prospect of learning something new about his mysterious friend. Still, he stayed silent, knowing that Eldridge would not have forgotten the question and that speaking could break the momentum.

"Show me your hands. Put them up with your palms out." Eldridge said, lifting his own left hand and spreading his fingers slightly to show Cramer. In his right hand, Eldridge held the staff in his lap resting against his black robes. The staff was only the length of his thigh and thick enough that the tips of his thumb and middle finger just touched around it.

For several minutes Cramer watched as Eldridge looked over each of his hands. He started at the tip of Cramer's right thumb and worked his way down each finger on Cramer's right hand before inspecting his palm in a slow spiralling pattern until he reached the center. Then he repeated this on the left hand. Eldridge pointed with his pinky and turned his nose up slightly as he went so that it reminded Cramer of a stuffy professor and he nearly laughed.

After he had inspected Cramer's palms, he turned his hands over and traced his pinky the same way around the backs of Cramer's hands.

When he was done, Eldridge turned Cramer's palms back up and sat straight. "Here." He said, pointing at a spot near his own left wrist. "That cut. It's from something recent that happened?"

"Uh, yeah." Cramer was starting to lose optimism that he was going to get anything more than another riddle. "I got a paper cut at work."

"Right." Said Eldridge. "And these scars here on your pinky and there on that thumb; those are older injuries?" They looked silently at each other for a moment before he added "This is going somewhere Cramer. If you want it to."

Cramer nodded. "Yeah, the one on my pinky is from trying to catch my cat that fell off my bed as a kid. The one on my thumb. That was something similar. Something that happened when I was younger."

Eldridge smiled, "good. That's good. Turn your hands over."

With a weary squint of one eye Cramer followed the instruction and turned his hands so that his palms were down.

"The scratch on your left hand, between the joints on your ring finger." Eldridge said. He paused to let Cramer look down and notice the scratch. "What is that from?". He asked.

"I'm not sure." Cramer thought for a moment and Eldridge stayed silent to let him come to it on his own. "I don't remember cutting myself there." He said eventually.

"You don't remember." Eldridge wasn't asking for clarification; Cramer recognized that this statement was somehow evidence for a truth that he couldn't see yet. "But it looks pretty recent." Eldridge went on. "The area is red. It is just beginning to scab slightly. It's thin but not like a paper cut."

"Right." Cramer said slowly. "But, uh, what's the point? The staff keeps you from getting random cuts on your hands?"

Eldridge laughed a deep laugh. "No, that would be a neat trick. No."

"Okay," said Cramer. "So what is the connection here?"

"That's it exactly." Eldridge said with a grin. "Your hands are a connection between you and every other you in every other universe."

Cramer blinked a few times. Deciding if this was real.

"When you are born. Your physical being starts immediately making choices and reacting to different forces and your one life diverges into many lives in many different universes." Eldridge explained.

"Okay, yeah." Cramer said. "I've heard that, where every choice we make could create a new universe. I think that was an episode of Stargate."

"Well," said Eldridge, "I think they might have gotten it from somewhere else. But you get the idea. There are a bunch of Cramer's and Eldridge's in a bunch of universe's that all started out as you and me; but have changed. And there's a lot of universe's where neither of us exist. Where by chances of genetics someone else was born in our place or our parents never got together in the first place."

"I'm with you." Cramer nodded.

"But the one thing that you have in common; one feature of ourselves that is the same if we gain weight, dye our hair, stunt our growth with caffeine and malnutrition; we never change our fingerprints."

"Sure." Cramer responded hesitantly, looking thoughtfully at his open hands.

"Well, just by chance. One of my ancestors found that this connection can be used for communication between worlds under certain circumstances."

"Wait, what?” Cramer asked with exasperation. “You're making some big logical leaps." he said. "We're really talking about traveling through dimensions with a stick?"

"Let me finish. You wanted to know."

"I do." Cramer sighed. "You're not pulling my leg though?"

"I would do no such thing." Eldridge looked briefly down the length of wall between them and the ground below, as if picturing a literal interpretation of Cramer’s question.

Cramer gave Eldridge a nod and he went on. "Many generations ago, centuries, my ancestor took hold of the sword above his mantle that had already been in the family for generations, and was transported to another place. He found himself in another universe where one of his other selves was touching the same sword at the same time. Through the common experience of their fingertips, they were temporarily smashed back together. See, when he came back; he realized that things had changed slightly for him. He felt different. He acted different.”

"My ancestor had asked our family's guardian spirits to aid him when he took the sword into his hand. He got the distinct feeling after the experience that his other self had been quite successful; and that when they melded together some of that life and energy rubbed off on him. After that, he had the hilt of the sword made into this short staff so that it could be passed down through the years more easily without taking notice. It would be a family secret and our deepest treasure; but it would look simple and without great value.

“If the legends told in our family are true; the system was tested several times in the early years. The first one to inherit the staff was given specific instruction to never let it go from his right hand. Such has been the responsibility of every descendant down to myself. Five years after he received the staff, at the age of 23, the first descendant felt a call that vibrated through his entire body from his hand, up his right arm and into his chest and his mind. The staff shifted and twisted in his hand, a sensation much greater than what his father had felt; but he understood that while his father had sent a call out and connected with another version of himself, he had never received the call himself.

“The first descendant gave in to the call and was transported from the garden at his small home to an area in the woods that he didn’t at first recognize. He could tell where he was from the distance and the angle of the mountain nearby; but the trees were different; the sounds were different. Then, standing in front of him in the clearing where he had been alone, the first descendant faced a terrible looking bear with its mouth open wide and its great paws extended up toward the sky.

“Standing there, he didn’t feel afraid. He could feel the power of a hundred men coursing through him, a hundred versions of himself that were the same, but different. In no time he was able to overcome the bear. In his left hand, the first descendant held a short sword and, swiftly and surely, he lodged the sword in the bear’s chest. He didn’t control his movements, it just happened. But his strength and his intention was focused on saving himself from that bear.”

Cramer gave Eldridge a quizzical nod, “So, if this has been a big family secret for generations; why are you telling me? Is this like a Doctor Who thing? You each get to pick a new companion?”

There was an eerie edge to the Cheshire smile that grew then on Eldridge’s face, “Not quite.” he said. “We have been friends a long time, Cramer, and you are the one person that I trust with this information. I didn’t know when it would happen. If ever. But I have received the call. Tonight. And I answered it.” he looked out over the city and Cramer realized that they were seeing two very different realities from that rooftop. “You have a significant part to play in all of this, my friend. Someone has to guide the people of this universe back from the brink of disaster.”

“And why would that be me?” Cramer couldn’t sit still any longer. He got off the ledge and onto the roof of the capitol building, taking a couple of steps back away from where Eldridge was still sitting. When he looked hard enough, he could start to see edges around the buildings that seemed to be disconnected and yet take up the same space as the buildings he was used to. The high school, the football field, all the shops along main street leading away from the capitol building were at the same time fading behind the veil of the shifting dimensions and also sharpening and becoming more defined through the layering of similar images over each other again and again more times that Cramer could conceive of.

“I have selected you.” Eldridge said matter-of-factly.

“You can’t just select me.” Cramer shot back. “I didn’t apply to be some kind of prophet.”

“And I didn’t sign up to be a warrior in the coming apocalypse.” Eldridge maintained a calm, steady tone. “Fate has decided for both of us.”

“Oh, screw your fate.” Cramer paced back and forth. “Screw your responsibility. Did you drug me tonight?” he turned back to where Eldridge had been sitting; but he was alone on the roof.

Running to the edge, Cramer looked frantically around for his friend. He had been hoping Eldridge wouldn’t be on the ground with a broken leg; but he started to get increasingly worried that Eldridge wasn’t there at all.

Cramer looked out over the city again and suddenly everything shifted into view so that the buildings and overlapping streets became clear. The streetlight that had been replaced the year before was at the same time the old streetlight that he remembered, the new streetlight that he had become used to, and still other versions overlapping and shifting to take up the same space without ever touching or reacting to each other.

Extending down from the dark sky, Cramer could see scaled tentacles covered in knobby suction cups that opened and closed as they descended down on the city in search of any surface to latch on to. The massive tentacle arms were the width of the capitol building itself and impossibly long, extending up out of view in the dark sky. A few of the giant suction cups latched onto the water tower at the edge of town and ripped it from the ground, launching it into the air and covering the town with a cold mist. A second later, the searching arms found the edges of the high school and the bank downtown. Steadied by its landing, the arms of the creature tensed and arched, using its suction as an anchor to pull its body down towards the Earth and bringing a horrible beak down from the heavens.

There were no eyes or ears that Cramer could see. Just that terrible beak opening slowly and letting a wet slime drip from its open orifice into the middle of the street before letting out a long, high pitched shriek. Cramer wanted to put his hands to his ears to block the sound; but he found himself paralyzed in place. Standing in the street, looking up at the horrible creature was Eldridge.

The man stood stoically in his black robes, holding his right hand out with the staff firmly in his grip. Eldridge’s left hand was extended up, pointed towards the beak of the creature. At first, to Cramer, it looked as if Eldridge had nothing in that hand; until his mind was able to adjust to the reality. Eldridge was not alone where he stood, he shared the space with innumerable versions of himself. One of those figures, flashing in and out of Cramer’s perception, held aloft a huge sword the length of Eldridge himself.

The hilt was large and dwarfed Eldridge’s hand. The blade itself extended at least five feet out from the hilt and shined brightly although there were only the street lights glowing above where he stood. In response to the ear splitting shriek let out by the creature, Eldridge let out a great battle cry that echoed off the buildings and carried strength and surety to where Cramer still stood on the roof of the capitol building. Eldridge’s form became a blur, then, as he leapt up from the asphalt, aimed straight into the beak of the creature. In one mighty push, Eldridge shot up a hundred feet in the air, slicing pieces from the searching tentacles as he neared the beak at the center of the creature’s body. The sword sank into the thick, scaly flesh without resistance.

And as suddenly as it had come. It was gone. The creature disappeared, leaving only a few severed limbs still suctioned to the buildings or lying lifeless in the street. With the monster, went Eldridge.

Wherever he is, Cramer thought, at least he is whole.

He then descended the capital building to begin his mission.