DANGEROUS CHOICE

Ian did not like what he saw and felt when he arrived in the next parallel life. If it had been an option, he would have gone right back to his couch; better an ordinary day after work than where he found himself. It was hard to imagine that this place had anything to do with Katerina, or with any time they had spent together.

He was moving through filthy, stinking streets filled with huge numbers of poor, destitute people without resource or hope. He could hear many sounds in this world, mostly a cacophony of voices—too many voices—sorrowful, angry, and suffering. The voices drowned out even the sounds of machines and big-city racket.

Ian’s point of view seemed to move too fast, and he was too high to be seeing from the eyes of a person. He watched from significantly above the heads of the people below, as if through the lens of a camera guided by some intention unknown to him. Why was he here? Was Katerina in this reality at all?

Then his point of view began to lower. He turned a corner and slowed as a tattered woman carrying a baby came out of a dilapidated building just in front of him. Ian resisted admitting it, but an all too reliable intuition assured him that this was Katerina. Oddly, he had no feelings of curiosity whatsoever as to the identity of the child. If the child was his and Katerina’s, this would be the first alternate life in which they were parents. But what a place to raise a child!

Ian drifted behind and somewhat above Katerina. She was hurrying along as if she were being pursued. Since Ian seemed to be disembodied, he did not believe it could be he, whatever he was, who troubled her.

She spoke to the child. Her language was foreign, but Ian was not surprised that he understood her. He had become accustomed to this. Despite all the overwhelming babble of the people on the street, he was tuned into her alone.

“Don’t worry, Eestu. Momma will find a place where he cannot hurt us,” she said.

Perhaps because the baby was being jostled as Katerina rushed away, perhaps because it could feel its mother’s distress, the child began to whimper.