Traveller

Inside my iced chamber my atomic structure vibrates so fast that I can't feel the cold. I can only observe what must be sub zero temperatures from the ice that frosts my enclosure, and my own breath which snow flakes around me.

Although I lay naked I am not exposed, the chamber has been designed with only one transparent window and it is directly in front of my face. I touch the glass and my heat melts the thick frost which settles there. I close my eyes and mentally go through the HUT's checklist. I imagine that the scientists whom I have hand picked are at the controls right now eager to begin.

Within minutes I hear the whir of the machine as the technicians begin the start up protocol. The thundering of it's engine reaches a deafening degree and I know it has begun. My vibrations take on a new intensity and I can feel the molecules in the air match my own oscillations as though I were a human tuning fork.

Suddenly the oxygen is sucked from what now feels like my coffin and everything becomes still. My last vision of this world is of Marie who stands safely behind the glass of my iced pod. She gives me a nervous smile and a weak thumbs up. I raise my arm to give her one back but darkness descends and within seconds I begin my travels. As I float in between universes I understand more about my own atomic structure than I ever have before. I am everything and nothing. The sum of my parts equal Zero. I am the big bang, the ultimate creation, I am God and Science.

I revel in this new found knowledge, this stunning revelation when suddenly I am whole again and standing naked in the rain. I raise my head to the skies and notice giant thunderheads rolling above. I glance down at my feet and the asphalt that lay under them. This new world seems surreal. My senses are so sharpened that it makes everything around me dizzying to look at. Suddenly every sense I have is tingling and I am bombarded by the feel of the rain, the smell of the asphalt, the sounds of oncoming traffic, the light from an SUV's headlights...

My eyes focus on the truck that is barreling straight for me, going much too fast for the conditions I now find myself in. My brain perceives too late something that the driver has already realized...I am in the middle of the road and I will never dodge the vehicle in time. In an instant I understand the irony and brace for impact. I close my eyes shut and pray my death is quick and painless so that when I am brought back to my world I am not broken and begging for help from the clausterphobic confines of that damned cold casket. The truck swerves and to my relief narrowly misses me. It's tires squeal in protest and it tips dangerously towards the drivers side. He over corrects his error and sends the truck into a terrifying death roll. Something is thrown from the vehicle and lands with a sickening thud upon the road a mere ten metres from where I still stand. I am frozen from my travels, and now from the horror I have inadvertently caused and stand stupidly looking at the twisted scene before me.

Finally the truck comes to a skidding stop 100 yards down the deserted road and I turn to seek out the driver when a voice weakly calls out, "mom?"

I look to the crumpled form before me and in a horrible instant realize...what I have done. I race to him, my feet slapping against the wet pavement and I crouch beside his broken form. The tears fall freely as I stare incredulously into the eyes of my son...

I clutch his tiny hand and he smiles at me. "You aren't mine" he states as though he understands that I am only a traveller, only a person who looks like his mother.

I can only shake my head and hold his little hand when he whispers, "I travel now too".

We leave together, hand in hand to the place between worlds. And in an instant I decide not to return to my body, to my own universe that I have left behind. It's true that I have succeeded in travelling to new realities, to new worlds, but I failed at accurately predicting my impact on them. So, with only the dead to greet my fellow scientists, they will declare my mission a failure, and the experiment will be abandoned in the search for something more attainable.

And so I remain, but continuously travel in between, alone and with company. For I am everything, and nothing.

The truest of travellers...