Sarah's Fault

[Hinton]

I wrote this one several years ago for a short-story writing contest. Hope you like it.

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It was all Sarah’s fault really.

Being born with a great intelligence can be a burden, but Sarah always looked at it from the other side. While others like her hid their intelligence from the public eye, she embraced it, even reveled in it.

“I found a way,” she told me that day at the beach just a few months ago.

“A way for what?”

“To open a door to another world.”

I laughed, but one look in her eyes told me she was serious. I had known her too long to know that she was serious when that look crossed her face. To distract her, I refilled her glass of wine. She ignored it, choosing instead to look at a pair of seagulls chasing each other at the water’s edge. The silence between us lasted until the gulls finally flew away. I hoped that she wouldn’t resume the topic, but she did.

“Think of it, Richard,” she said, her eyes showing a light that meant she had latched onto something and wouldn’t let go. She reached out and touched my hand, her eyes fixing on mine. “A doorway to another world. A chance to see what our lives would be like if we had taken different roads.”

“Sarah, I know that you don’t think like other people, but please, what your talking about is…” I let the sentence hang, not wanting to say it. She finished for me.

“Crazy.” She nodded. “I know.” She fell silent again. I bit my lip, wanting to say things to her, to talk her away from these crazy dreams; to tell her that I loved her, that she could come away with me. Anything to draw her away from this damned obsession of hers.

When I had met Sarah in college, I knew how smart she was. A freshman myself, I had naturally been drawn to her the way that new people do in strange surroundings. What I later learned was her passion for finding a way to change the past; to discover some way to make things better by altering that which had already occurred. She had been almost literally laughed out of school when she turned in her senior thesis on time travel. She had agreed to write a new one in exchange for graduation. And graduate she did, at the age of sixteen.

I was twenty-two by then, but we were friends and had begun to grow fond of each other. When she finally turned eighteen, our romance officially began. For three years we had been happy; she at her job as a research assistant for a major computer company; me at my job as a reporter. Tentative plans had been made for marriage. Things were as they were supposed to be.

Then someone had approached her about her thesis. The first one. How her mysterious benefactor had ever found out about it was beyond me and she never would tell me, but he had read it and had liked what he had seen. With his money, she had built a lab of her own, surrounded herself with the best and brightest scientists in the world, and set out with one mission: find a way to travel through time.

When she first told me of it, I had laughed, but that look came and I knew that she was dead serious. I did the only thing that I could: I supported her. I tolerated night after lonely night, waiting for her to come home, knowing that she was either working too hard to notice the time or had passed out from exhaustion.

“-tomorrow.” she said.

“Hmm?”

“I said, we’re going to try to open the door tomorrow.”

“Why, honey? Why is it so important?”

Her bottom lip set and her brow creased. I brushed away an errant strand of her brown hair that fell onto her face. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

“Understand what? That your family life was horrid? That you want to find some way to go back and make it better? I’ve said it so many times before: the past is the past. You can’t live there. You need to put it behind you and move on.”

She turned to me, her face lined with anger. “You just don’t get it, do you? If I can look into another world, a parallel dimension perhaps, then maybe I can see a place where I wasn’t treated like an animal. Maybe I’ll see a world where I was loved and respected.” She paused. “A world where I was accepted for being different.”

“Jesus, Sarah!” I stood and brushed sand from my shirt. “You talk as though you were tortured on a daily basis. You know, there are people out there that have it a lot worse than you did. All you care about is getting some sort of praise for being a genius.” I leaned over and said the one thing that I will regret until my dying day. “You’re so god-damned selfish. Go. Go and open your damn door and get all the praise you want. Just don’t expect it from me.” I turned and walked away. I knew that it hurt her, that my criticism had hit too close to home, but my anger wouldn’t let me turn around and apologize.

I finally returned home to find that she wasn’t there. I wanted to say I was sorry for the horrible things I had said. I wasn’t sure why it had upset me so. Perhaps because it had been a beautiful day and she had brought up work yet again. Perhaps it was because we had put off the wedding yet again because of her work. I paced around the living a few times, then decided I’d go to the lab and make my apologies there.

When I finally got into the lab, people were buzzing about, monitoring large machines that surely cost a small fortune, and a general feeling of excitement and energy filled the air. I walked past white-coated lab assistants and blue-coated technicians. I had been here a few times before, but had never really gotten the chance to meet anyone. A few gave me look as though I didn’t belong (which I didn’t), but no one bothered me. I saw Sarah sitting at a large desk that had several monitors mounted on it. Information passed by on the screen faster than I could follow, but she never stopped writing down the things that made sense to only her.

I stood behind her and cleared my throat. “I just ran into this guy who says he was really rude to a really wonderful woman and he wanted to apologize, but he didn’t know how to. He thought maybe I could make a go of it.”

Her eyes never left the screens. “I’m busy,” was her terse reply.

I hunched beside her chair. “Look, Sarah, I’m really sorry for what I said. I really am. Look, why don’t you come home, I’ll make some dinner, and we can talk this out.”

“All systems report ready, Dr. Polves,” an assistant said from a nearby console. Sarah nodded and stood. I followed suit and noticed where her gaze fell. On the far side of the room sat a large rectangle of steel against a concrete wall. Wires ran from it in all directions to various pieces of equipment throughout the room.

“Uh, Sarah-“

“Shush.” The rectangle began to glow as energy both went into and out of it.

“Sarah,” I said, a little more insistent this time, “what are you doing?”

“We’re opening the doorway.”

I watched in fascination as the concrete framed by the metal began to disappear, to be replaced by what looked to be a blue sky. Towards the bottom of the doorway it started to turn green and I realized that I was seeing grass. A flash of light went out from that blue sky and passed through the room. When I opened my eyes, the doorway was fully open. Almost as one, all of us in the room went closer to that blue sky and green grass, all of us silent. Sarah led the way and stopped just inches away from entering it. She slowly reached out and her fingertips passed through the plane between our world and wherever that world was. When she pulled her hand back, she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. It was that certain smile that always made me catch my breath and made me love her even more.

“Are we ready?” she asked. In response, the group parted and several remote- controlled carts covered with green tarps rolled through the aisle that the people formed. The machines passed through the doorway and instantly appeared on the other side. The tarps fluttered in a light breeze, but otherwise seemed unaffected.

“Let’s go,” Sarah said as she grabbed my hand and started pulling me along.

“What?” I stopped her, but the others in the room flocked past us. They walked through the doorway without reservation, most of them smiling. “What’s going on, Sarah?”

She licked her lips. “Last week I found out what all of this-” she gestured to the room, “-was about. They want to use it to go out and conquer other worlds; worlds that have never heard of war, or torture, or armies, or any of it. I can’t let them do that.” She looked through to that other world where the people had removed their lab coats and were unpacking the carts. “A group of us decided that we wanted to leave this place, this world, for a better one. We’ve spent the past week opening door after door, trying to find the right one.” She pointed at the doorway. “That world is uninhabited as far as we can tell. None of us have anything to keep us here. The ones that do are all at home with their families and friends. Please, Richard, come with me.”

“What about the equipment and the research?” I asked, honestly curious.

“It’s set to have a critical meltdown fifteen minutes from now.”

I tore my eyes away from the people and the grass and the sky. “Were you going to come and get me?”

She smiled coyly. “I knew you’d come. I know how you are. You can’t stand being mad and that’s just one of the many things that I love about you.” She reached out and touched my face. “It’s not about my past, it’s about my future. I can’t be here with you forever when all I see is death. I want us to raise a family in a better place.”

My breath stopped and my heart skipped a beat. “A family?”

“Yes, Richard, a family. Come with me. Please.”

It took all of one second. I had no one here either. Maybe that’s why she had chosen me as well, but it didn’t matter. I loved her and would follow her anywhere. I took her hand and stepped through the doorway to our new lives.

That was several months ago and we have all settled into a routine here. All in all, things are going well. Several of the assistants have gotten together; some have even married and are working on their own families. And Sarah found out that she was pregnant yesterday. That’s why I’m writing all of this down. I wanted to tell our child that it’s all your mother’s fault. It’s Sarah’s fault for finding this world for us; it’s her fault that I love her so much; it’s her fault that I am happy.

[Nathan Caroland]

Hah, not the ending that I expected but really rather fun and light hearted. I like it.

[Vytis]

Quite excellent, good sir.

[Hinton]

Thanks, guys.

[Thryth]

:congrats::congrats::congrats:

:clap::clap::clap:

Great story!

[Duende]

Great writing, and I was also surprised with the direction the ending took. Very unexpected.

[Hinton]

Thank you all. I'm glad you liked it.