WHERE YOU ARE

TIMELINE

INTERFERENCE POINT

TETHER

So you are here.


So you’re getting the hang of it. So consciousness is a substance that floats free in the many universes. So the universes love to know themselves. So selfhood is a tenacious little burr on the heel of entropy.


It helps that here at least you have a human brain to think with. The first thing you notice is that you’re perfectly hydrated. The second thing you notice is the dimness, and the freshness of the air. It’s not that you were expecting brilliant sunshine. It’s just that you didn’t know light could be this green. Behind you, you can hear the rustle of a calm crowd of people, and a sound like dry leaves being blown along a street. You’re thinking clearly, your brain loose and unburdened by the takeaway spoon’s worth of microplastics you’re used to. You are gripped with a sudden certainty that somewhere in this universe, Heath Ledger is still alive.


Who told you once that we evolved to thrive in the open forest? In your memory the lesson has the shine of unquestionable truth that only a mum can burnish onto something. We evolved to thrive in the open forest. All around you are trunks as wide as caravans, spaced so a parade could walk between them, towering into the green-hazed mist and turning the floor, the air, the people beneath them deep emerald. A park but not as you’ve ever known it.


The path before you is wide and inviting. Go on: take it. The vessel you’re in is easy to drive. The contours of the memories are different but it’s familiar, you’re a human person with limbs numbering in the usual range and clothes and a haircut and so on. But you’ve got an embodied sense of calm that is unfamiliar. The air is very clean and smells very good. Walking in the giant trees feels absolutely correct. There are others around you whose attitudes are calm and friendly. You feel safe in a way you haven’t felt before.


Now you’re here, walking between two walls of sandstone. It’s familiar but it’s different. It is a gallery of plaques in brass. There are words embossed on them but they are outshone by casts that look like fossils or finger marks, polished bright by what must have been many, many stroking hands.


Here’s one at eye-level. There is a name and a date and a set of five protuberances, four bean-shaped nodules crowning a heart-shaped island. You feel a pleasant confusion. This is something that you know, the you that lives in this branch of the universe, this is like knowing what day is Christmas and how to comb a child’s hair. You trace the pebbled imprints with your fingertips and trace the unfamiliar contours of this brain’s neural pathways with your own thoughts and the word comes to you: dog. It is a dog’s paw. These are dog monuments.


Who told you that we evolved alongside dogs? That we did not domesticate them but converged upon one another, history’s greatest meet cute, a fluffy rom com with staying power. Look back where you started and see the market, see the source of that dry-leaf sound in a hundred paws’ claws tapping on the asphalt. Nearly everyone has a dog with them. They are well behaved. They are unleashed. The people and the dogs. Those gorgeous tall trees. The cleanliness of the air. A monument to loyalty. A city for paws as well as people. That there exists a timeline where dogs made us better people, not just individually but as a whole. You feel your throat stiffen with sudden emotion.


And also, like a hand at your windpipe, you’re seized by the certainty that he’s not here, he is nowhere in this world, because the people are adults and there are no children at all. A slogan swims up from this body’s adolescence:


THANK YOU FOR SPAYING AND NEUTERING YOURSELVES


Someone with a Jack Russell at her heel has noticed your distress and is coming to help you. Don’t think of the noses and paws cast in bronze. Don’t think of your own dog, this timeline’s own dog, who you know is at home waiting for you right now. Don’t think of anything except finding your quarry or you will stay here – stay – sit – speak – leave it –


To look for Cay in the wattles, turn to Timeline VII 


To look for Cay underwater, turn to Timeline II 


To look for Cay at the tracks, turn to Timeline VI 


To look for Cay in the hive, turn to Timeline XX 


To look for Cay in ????, turn to Timeline IV


To stop looking for Cay, turn to Timeline 0