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The Closest Thing To Ours

It was as close as she would get.

By Tom FoxPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
2
Credit to Orion Terry for the image.

Frances checked the directions again on her mental drive after she stepped out of the silent MagCab. She felt the air juggle with her silver hair as the vehicle shot up into the air, leaving her on a rare cobbled pavement at the bottom of the city, questioning whether this was the right thing to do, the right place for her to be. A sharp pain ran through her back, the awkwardness of the slouched seating in the cab having effected her ninety four year old body, and she used a modification Sarah had bought her to send a burst of well-needed heat around her tightened muscles.

Sarah. That’s why she was here. She checked her surroundings and spotted the useless street sign hanging by a thread, with the words ‘Oxford Road’ fading out of existence. That was the first instruction. She followed the pavement towards it, her eyes always on the small number of people around her. There was some type of old fashioned bar across from her, flashing screens distracting the three lonely gentlemen and the owner who inhabited it. It reminded her of when she was much younger, a time when her own father was alive and it was still deemed plausible to live on the surface in a house with underground plumbing. She used to follow him to his favourite pub, sipping drinks that went out of fashion and staring up at a city mid-transformation.

Once she reached the sign, the directions told her to take a swift right down a darkened road until she found a small set of concrete steps. She moved cautiously and buttoned up her ocean-blue cardigan, resisting the urge to cough. The air felt thicker on the surface, like she was swallowing the smoke from the e-cigarettes her mother once used. Sarah would have not approved of this. She would have moaned and given her the same look that she gave whenever Frances tried to convince her that something or other was easier to do before all of this technology.

As she reached the steps, she noticed the charcoal steel door at the top. The final instruction was to put her hand against the scanner where the door knob would have once been. She hesitated. Frances checked the amount of money she had left in her mental currency wallet, worried that the MagCab might have overcharged her or her rent had come out early, leaving her without the means to do what she was about to do. Fortunately, the money sat there untouched and plentiful. She took in a final breathe of surface air and placed her hand against the scanner, which identified her immediately and opened with an alarming, foreboding clunk.

Inside, she made her way down a scarcely lit corridor and into something she had not experienced since she was a child - a waiting room. Luckily, she seemed to be alone, and took the advice of a poorly written wall hologram and sat in one of the mismatched chairs that dotted the room. She did not miss these places. She had rarely been in a waiting room as a child, but when she had, it was always to wait for either her mother or father to have an organ transplant, and they always returned to her with a pale sickly face, and rushed her out the building. That had never been the case with Sarah. Every time she needed surgery and they had actually gone somewhere as opposed to let a new modification tackle the issue, there had never been a need to wait. Straight in, straight out, and Sarah had always looked brighter for it.

‘Ms Frances Shephard’ a voice suddenly boomed, hearty and slow.

‘Ah,’ Frances stuttered, ‘yes, yes that’s me.’

For a few seconds, no response, and then suddenly a previously hidden door beside the wall-hologram crept open. A blaring purple light escaped into the waiting room and Frances felt her heart rate increase, her body trying to reject what was about to happen. She lifted herself from her chair and found her way through the door, her eyes almost blinded by the contents of the new room.

She had seen a portal, of course. Everyone had. But to see one live, not through her mental vision, was another thing entirely. There was an oddly familiar beauty to it, and she recalled a memory of a picnic beside a field of tulips with friends that she no longer knew. Sarah would have loved and hated seeing it..

’The money was removed on arrival Ms Shephard. A one-way trip. Is that correct?’

Frances didn’t respond at first, her attention was still on the perfect violet square floating in front of her.

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Good. Whenever you are ready. Please be aware that none of your mental modifications or functions will be active on the other side.’

‘Oh.’ Frances had not recalled reading that on the advert. ‘I see.’

‘Don’t worry, if you get settled you should be able to get access to one that works in their world.’

The ‘if’ worried Frances immediately. Maybe she should have spent more time thinking this through. It would mortify Sarah, flapping and telling her what a god damn fool she was being. Strangely, thinking about that seemed to calm her.

’Thank you.’

She took a step towards the portal. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the light by now, and she was hoping she might be able to see something beyond the colour, but there was nothing. She took another step. What if she was being conned? What if she stepped inside and ended up somewhere completely different, somewhere empty and deserted. She had heard a group of refugees on a video once describing the world they had travelled from, emphasising it’s continent-covering deserts and boiling lava-like seas.

‘I have another customer waiting.’

His voice unsettled her, but it was the push she needed. It was too late now. There was nothing here for her anyway.

She gritted her teeth and pushed her way through the portal to another world.

*

Frances had expected some type of sensation. An overwhelming feeling of something unusual, alien even, but instead as soon her eyes met the wall of purple, it was gone. In front of her instead an empty room, with a single door in the centre and behind her a normal white wall.

She stood, frozen, for several minutes.

‘Welcome,’ another voice, friendlier this time. ‘In the next room, you will find an e-wallet with enough currency to get you to wherever you need to go, as agreed.’

Frances opened her mouth but said nothing. Instead she nodded, assuming that whoever was speaking could also see her, and made her way through the door. She took the e-wallet from the lonely table, again in the centre of the room, and seemed to recall her steps down the corridor she had just come from. This time the charcoal steel door opened for her, and she stepped out onto the darkened street. The taste of the air was the thing that finally comforted her. It was a completely different consistency - much cleaner. She even broke out in a smile.

She made her way back to the cobbled pavement, with the bar on the opposite side, and was again relieved to see that while the bar was there, it was less dingy, full with people and had one single screen instead of four or five. She was not quite in her world.

She looked up and saw the city endlessly reach into the sky, a slim gap of sunlight peaking through and reaching the surface. She watched as a MagCab slowly floated down with a passenger inside and she walked with a fresh energy to wave it down, hoping that even without a driver, it’s sensors would indicate her presence. As the passenger left, it jolted towards her with the door still open. She jumped in, her heart now racing as she fingered the keyboard with her own address, desperate to get moving - to get home.

The MagCab lifted ferociously and flew up and into the cityscape, using the forensically designed magnetic field to flicker in and out of spaces, dodging every other vehicle as it rose. The man from her own world was right - her mental modifications and functions were quiet. She was seeing the city with her own, untouched eyes for the first time in years and the colours bombarded her, flashing by in quick succession. She wished the cab had a driver, so she could tell him everything, describe with childish glee how she got here and what she was about to do. Maybe she could tell Sarah. Maybe.

The MagCab began to slow and the pods around gradually came into focus. They lived in one of the allotted pension sections of the city, and because of Sarah’s situation and the money from the adoption agency, Frances was able to afford a spacious but modest home. She watched out the window as the yellow brick texture they had chosen together appeared in the distance, then the small makeshift greenhouse out the front, and then the white door with the frosted windows. She was practically standing in the cab as it began it’s slow, steady decent towards her personal pod station. She was in there. Sarah was in there.

She leapt out of the cab, and moved her aging body as fast as it could up the pathway to her front door. She was about to roll into the house at full speed when she forced herself to stop, pulling herself back from the excitement and the joy so she could face the reality of the situation for a moment.

This is not your world. This is not your house. This is not your Sarah.

It was as close as she would get. It has been advertised as the ‘closest thing to ours’ you could find. For most it was a second chance, at a new life, a new identity, or at finding someone you once lost.

Frances knew that whatever happened, there would be consequences. There were consequences for those who had travelled to her world, and they were severe. But she had decided almost immediately that she no longer cared for it. This wasn’t about reliving a life once lived. It wasn’t about going back in time to when Sarah was alive, healthy, demanding and telling her off for shouting at the oven. She just wanted to hold her one more time, see her smile at something amusing that had happened, hear her talk about her day with sustained, northern passion, and say her name. The word ‘mum’, that simple little word, meant nothing unless it came out of her perfect, awkward mouth.

That alone was all the encouragement she needed. She leant forward and opened the door, stepping straight into her own hallway. The familiar smell of some baked good tingled her grey nostril hairs. Her eyes widened.

’Sarah?’ She called out.

’Sarah?’

science fiction
2

About the Creator

Tom Fox

Storyteller. English Teacher in the North.

“My arms are killing me. I didn't know words could be so heavy.”

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