Chapter 32: Chapter 32

Maya As Maya, Ka, Ke and Ellie approached the somewhat miserable looking tree that was propped up by green stilts, a man stepped out from behind it and stood staring at them. The man was in his thirties, with long ginger hair in a ponytail. He was dressed casually in jeans and a jacket with black boots.

“Well, he’s either a weirdo or our guy,” remarked Ellie good naturedly as they approached the stranger.

“You must be Brian,” she said, proffering her hand. The man took it and kissed the back of it in an elegant gesture of chivalry that gave Maya the creeps. It was okay for Les to do it, but not for this guy.

“And you must be Ellie,” he returned, turning to look at their merry party. “Twins or copies?” he asked, scrutinising the Ka’s.

“Copies,” they answered, walking forwards to shake hands. Their new friend didn’t seem at all taken aback at there being two copies of a man, nor did he question it.

“Well,” said Brian, rubbing his hands. “If you don’t mind awfully, we need to retire to the bushes where we can go somewhere to talk.”

Normally Brian’s statement would have seemed more than a little strange, however Maya and company had recently redefined strange.

They followed the man into the shrubbery, fighting their way through, to see a man and woman waiting for them there.

“This is Steve, and Zinia,” Brian introduced in the cramped, damp bushes. They introduced themselves quickly, wanting to not be there any longer than they needed to.

“Can we see your portal?” the man called Steve asked. Taking his hand, Maya immediately opened one to St. Lukes; something told her not to show strangers their friend’s flat.

“Great!” said Steve, not putting his head through. It seemed just seeing the portal was sufficient. “Would you all like to follow us to our house, we can talk there.”

They followed the stranger through his portal, entering a spacious living room. They were getting used to arriving directly into houses rather than using doors.

Once they were all seated and feeling mutually awkward, Steve appeared with a large pot of coffee and several mugs.

Maya took her coffee carefully, as she was sat on a cream leather sofa in a blandly decorated house, with uninspiring pictures hanging on the walls. It could have been a show home for all the life it exuded, quite contrary to their charismatic host.

“So folks, what can we do for you today?” he beamed, showing a row of straight white teeth. He had a generic English accent, tinged with something else that was hard to place. His laid back manner was comforting and put Maya immediately at ease.

“We’re looking for my soul,” she told him, causing him to blink and look at her in amazement.

“I would hazard a guess and say it is in your body,” he replied, frowning slightly.

The others laughed, and Ellie stepped up to offer and explanation.

“Not Maya’s soul, the other Maya who is in a coma. And we were also wondering what the hell is going on. Why Maya can suddenly open portals into other dimensions?” she asked their new compadre.

“Ah, that makes a lot more sense,” Steve nodded, shooting an amused look at Maya. “To answer the first question, I have to answer the second first.”

Steve took a sip of his coffee and looked at each of them in turn.

“The gift is the power to create wormholes in space but not time, as I’m sure you’ve worked out. It is exceptionally rare, I don’t know how often it occurs because it seems quite random, but travellers have been around since sentient beings first came about.”

“Why?” implored Maya, wanting to know why her perfect life had vanished.

“No-one knows, I’m afraid.” Steve looked genuinely aggrieved at his lack of answers. Brian and Zinia sat drinking their coffee, watching in silence. Brian looked quite serene and comfortable in that environment.

“Will I ever be able to control it?” Maya was revealing something that had been plaguing her and Ka since they first set foot in that world. “I worry that we’ll portal to our home, but it won’t be our home, it’ll be the same place in another reality. I’m afraid that we go through and never find our way home.”

“Right,” Steve said smiling. “There are only two of your world. Universes go around in pairs, each a perfect physical mirror of the other. Other mirrrorverses are totally different. We can only travel to worlds with compatible oxygenated atmospheres, but I have no doubt that there are many more mirrorverses out there that we cannot reach.”

“If you can only go to oxygenated atmospheres, how did Maya open a portal into the Pacific ocean. Or some ocean anyway. She flooded the flat!” declared Ka, Ke having backed off at ‘if’.

“I have no idea,” Steve laughed. “I’ve never managed that, though I did a few corkers in the early years.”

“When you first got the gift?” asked Maya, wondering how he coped.

“Yeah, I was sixteen and had no-one to tell me what was going on, and no-one I could tell. But I got the hang of it and started a new life.”

Maya felt for Steve, wondering how she could have coped without Ka and everyone around her, supporting her to keep her sane.

“Can the gift come at any time?” Ellie asked, tracing her finger around the rim of her coffee cup.

“No, it always comes at puberty. How old are you? How long have you had it?” he aimed the questions at Maya after answering Ellie.

“I’m twenty two, and it came a week or two ago,” she replied, realising that she had lost track of time.

“Seems a little late, did you have any problems with delayed puberty?”

“No, normal puberty,” she replied, a little affronted. She knew her breasts weren’t big or anything, but they were present and correct.

“No, please don’t mistake me,” he held his hands up, looking concerned. “It’s just that I have never heard of someone getting the gift past puberty. But it is an extensive multiverse, so anything is possible.”

“So if anything is possible, doesn’t that mean there are infinite possibilities, and therefore many parallel universes with small variations. That’s what physicists think. Are they all wrong?” Ke asked, Ka nodding along with him.

“The multiverse is not infinite,” Brian interjected from the other sofa, causing everyone to turn to him. “As you just pointed out, if it were infinite there would be infinite worlds, not just isolated pairs of worlds. What is beyond all this, no-one knows.”

“We have had access to advanced physics in other mirrorverses, doesn’t make much sense to me, but no-one can ascertain what is beyond our reach, though many still prattle on about infinity proving they clearly don’t understand the multiverse,” added Steve.

“Hey, the other Maya got the gift at puberty, when she was fourteen,” Ellie interrupted. “Does that matter?”

“The other Maya had the gift too?” Steve looked between Maya and Ellie, his interest suddenly elevated.

“Yes,” said Ellie miserably. “We thought she was mad. She had no control of it. It took her to bad places and she had bad...bad...”

Ellie broke down, and Maya went to her, sitting on the arm of the sofa to wrap her arms around her. Ellie pulled herself together and pushed Maya away, so Maya returned to her seat.

“What other worlds are there?” asked the Ka’s gaily, abruptly changing the subject.

“Well, there’s a world of knights and dragons, others of varying stages of evolutionary development of humans or other air breathing creatures. Some worlds are civilised, others are not. Some are technologically advanced, others still burn witches, or some local equivalent.”

“Hey, if it’s Neanderthals, we can send them during a ball game, they’d fit right in!” Maya piped up, motioning towards the Ka’s with her thumb. They faux glowered at her in response.

“Right, I’m going to get more coffee. A hand?” Steve looked at Maya meaningfully so she jumped up and followed him into the kitchen.

“So the other you had the gift. What happened to her?” Steve asked gently as he filled the kettle.

“She tried to kill herself and went into this coma, only a few months ago. I kept waking up in her body, being told I was mad and my life wasn’t real. I didn’t know what was happening, began to believe I was bonkers. Thankfully after that I started to believe that I was teleporting somehow and dragged Ka through a portal into this world,” explained Maya. “Or the one we came from anyway,” she added, realising she had no idea which world they were in.

“Wow, big shit huh?” Steve’s eloquent response made Maya laugh, and he joined in. “So you’re trying to find where the other you went?”

“Yeah, I figure her soul isn’t there any more, I’d have felt it when I was in her body. I want to get her back, give her a life that she never had when no-one believed her.”

“And all this is pretty hard on Ellie, who was one of the non-believers.” said Steve intuitively, whistling through his teeth and shaking his head.

“And I think Ke wants his Maya, he seems so isolated and lonely,” observed Maya, thinking of the ghost that had been Ke since they’d met him. He joined in with Ka sometimes, but then just faded away into the background.

“Well, why don’t we re-join the others to discuss the possible location of your mirror,” suggested Steve, and Maya followed him and the steaming pot of coffee back into the lounge.

“Souls can leave the body,” Steve started, blowing in his cup. “They can go to the astral plane, leaving the body behind.”

“So it’s true!” chorused the Ka’s gleefully. “There is an astral plane!”

“Indeed, it links all the universes together. If Maya is not in her body, and not on the astral plane, she’s passed on. We don’t know to where, it is life’s greatest mystery.” Steve turned to Maya, “so, you have to go there to find her. Then you will know.”

“How do I get there?” she wondered, somewhat unwilling to leave her body again.

“I can show you the way but I will not follow, this is your journey. You won’t get lost, you will always be able to find your way back to your body.”

“But Maya didn’t” cried Ellie, looking scared.

“We don’t know that,” Steve said gently. “There are always exceptions, like a severely traumatic event can sever the chord that connects mind to body. This Maya will not suffer that fate, I assure you.”

“This is your path, and you must take it,” Zinnia said unexpectedly, in a deep rich voice, the first time she had spoken. She had a strong African accent, and in Maya’s opinion the woman was stunningly beautiful, with well-defined cheekbones and was about her age. Zinia was as tall as Ka and could easily have been a model.

“I will,” Maya nodded.

“How do you guys know each other?” interrupted the terrible twins.

“We go well back,” laughed Steve. “Zinnia is my wife, we met in Africa. Brian is an old friend, we’ve been kicking around together for years.”

Maya wondered how Steve and such a young woman could go well back. They did make the strangest couple as Steve was about Maya’s height, which was only about five foot four. But love was love, and they both seemed really nice.

“Do you both have the gift?” she asked, looking at Brian and Zinia.

“No,” replied Brian. “We’re just along for the ride.”

“Know that feeling,” the Ka’s added, making everyone laugh.

“There’s something you need to know before you start gallivanting around the astral plane,” Steve divulged, an edge to his voice.

“What’s that?” Maya joined the twins in unison somewhat comically.

“The Spectrals,” Steve sighed. “They are sort of transparent but also not. They are white floating chunks of energy that believe travellers should not exist. When you see a Spectral, run. Open a portal to anywhere, then another and another. I’ve escaped quite happily all these years, so it’s not anything major to worry about.”

“Not anything major to worry about!” the Ka’s shrieked.

“Chill, seriously, you were sitting ducks and they left you alone.” Steve was looking less calm, almost flustered at the effect he’d had on them, particularly the clucking pair on the other sofa. “I’m sorry I got you all worked up, it’s really not something that is likely to happen. I mean, I went a century before I met them.” Steve stopped abruptly, clearly hoping no-one was going to notice his little slip.

“A century?” Ellie, the Ka’s and Maya chorused together.

Steve sighed deeply before reluctantly explaining.

“I am two hundred and twenty seven years old.” He spoke totally deadpan, as if it were possible to be that age.

“Two hundred and twenty seven?” they all chanted incredulously.

“Yeah, you just head to an uber-future world where they have found a cure for ageing. Then you get to live forever.” Steve looked less than impressed at having to impart this information. Maya couldn’t work out why he wouldn’t want them to know.

“Not sure I’d want to live forever,” Maya frowned, looking at Steve from a new angle. She couldn’t imagine being forty, let alone a hundred and forty.

“So where is the other you,” Steve asked Ellie, abruptly changing the subject.

“Somewhere in the other London,” she told him, surprised by the conversation’s turn. “Apparently she plays the cello in an orchestra. Totally different to my life. Can’t believe what a difference Maya made to us.”

The Ka’s nodded in agreement as Maya turned red. She didn’t mean to be like that. She didn’t ask for it, any of it. She just wanted to get the other Maya’s soul back and go home to where it all made sense. She knew that she had already lost her place in the orchestra because of her absence, knew that that part of her life was over.

“So what’s with the sign up for special abilities?” Ellie asked their hosts. “Why do you want us?”

“We are looking for other abilities, not just travelling,” answered Brian. “We wondered if there were other gifts that we had not encountered. I mean, planets are big enough, but the multiverse is vast, so we devised a way to create contact with those in which we were interested.”

“Going well then, just us by any chance?” Maya asked cheekily, suspecting the answer would be yes since Steve had said the gift was exceptionally rare.

“Oh no, we’ve had plenty of phone calls. Surprised we found your message amongst the wackos claiming their dreams are prophetic, something fell off their shelf so they must have the Jedi mind trick, they can guess what playing card comes next sometimes, you know. We were expecting it.”

“Time for your voyage to the astral plane,” Steve butted in, his smiling face clearly belying his years.

“Oh yay,” Maya gulped, worrying about bumping into Spectrals on the astral plane.