Robert Lennon - Familiar

Betsy! Suddenly Elisa feels revitalized. She wants to talk to her, to get to the bottom of that whole thing. They really made a connection that day, last summer, didn’t they? Surely Betsy doesn’t think she’s just some nut. Elisa doesn’t mind, not really, what happened — she just wishes they’d been honest with her, that’s all.

She gets up, mutters excuse me, pushes through the crowd. People keep staggering into her path carrying multiple drinks. Everyone’s voice is loud, far louder than one might expect of nerds. Finally she’s through and into the lobby, where the ambient temperature drops by five degrees, and where Muzak is drifting down from the ceiling. She looks around: there, down that hall. It must be her, the blue hair, the broad hips and purposeful stride. Elisa runs to catch up, sneakers squeaking on the fake marble floor.

It’s not a hallway, actually, it’s the foyer the elevators open onto, four sets of doors, four illuminated panels displaying the numbers of floors. One set is closing. Elisa hurries to it, peers inside as the strip of light narrows. There she is, the same rounded shoulders and cat-eye glasses. “Betsy!”

Betsy Orosco glances over Elisa’s shoulder, looks right past as if she isn’t there. Then the elevator doors close and she’s gone.

Sometime in the night she wakes up and tries to slide herself out of the big bed. She is bound up in the sheets, she feels them tugging out from under the mattress, and by the time one foot has hit the carpet the other has become stuck, and she flings her arms out for balance and finds the wall. She is standing there in the dark, in a frozen pirouette, her heart racing. She feels fully awake but knows she is not. The sheets release her foot. She collapses against the wall, pressing her face and both hands to it.

Elisa has no idea where she is. She doesn’t know which direction to move in. She knows that she isn’t at home: there is no sound from anywhere and no air is moving. She says Derek’s name and then remembers she and Derek are no longer together, and then doubts that memory.

She thinks of the boys and experiences a moment of panic. In her mind they are five and six years old and in danger. This isn’t right, she can’t put her finger on how. She moves a step, then another, along this wall and suddenly fears moving further; she does not want to get closer to the boys. Whatever is the matter, she will make it worse. She says Derek’s name again, and now it feels truly wrong: she’s coming to. She’s in a hotel. She went on a trip. Is she in Wisconsin? No — North Carolina. It’s a Holiday Inn. The bathroom is just around the corner. She can move, now, in the dark.

Back on the bed she is sweating profusely. As if in response, the air-conditioning kicks on with a grunt. The clock reads 3:14. Then it reads 4:40. Then it’s light and she is lying shivering with the sheets tugged off the bed and bundled in a heap beside it. She feels as though she hasn’t slept at all.

She wears her lanyard to breakfast and sits with some people from the parallel worlds forum, including RueTheDay. They are mostly younger than she is, except for one very old man. His ID reads CharlesSmith. Elisa doesn’t recognize the name. The group is animated and enthusiastic, and they are talking about the same things they talk about online, except that, in the absence of official moderation, they mention more television programs.

It’s not quite what she was expecting. But she isn’t certain what’s missing. She finds herself peering across the banquet room, trying to identify other forum members, but she can’t read their tags from here. She doesn’t see Betsy anywhere. The woman she thinks is Patricia fills a bowl with scrambled eggs, then scans the room as though looking for a seat. She makes eye contact with Elisa, puts on a small demure smile, and walks in the opposite direction, to where there is an empty table. A few moments later a man walking on crutches sits down with her and the two sit facing each other in apparent silence.

The first major event of the day is a parallel worlds panel — it is one of the main reasons she is here. Her breakfast companions ask her if she is excited about it. Their attention takes her by surprise — it is strange that these unfamiliar people know something about her, about her preoccupations.

“I suppose I am,” she tells them, and they all laugh.

A tired-looking man called part_human says, “You’re just like you are on the board.”

“What am I like on the board?”

“Reserved,” says nottennis. She is clearly enjoying the attention of the men around her.

“Restrained,” says PresumedInsane. He is her age, shockingly thin, Adam’s apple, black beard spattered with gray.

RueTheDay says, “You’re our resident grown-up.”

“I’m not that much older than you.”

“Not your age, ” says nottennis, “The way you are. ”

“Oh.”

To her left, CharlesSmith silently works his jaw. He is alert but looks no one in the eye. After a time, he struggles to his feet and leaves.

Nottennis says, “Um, has anybody ever even heard of that guy?”

The parallel worlds panel is in a small conference room down the hall. There’s a dais with four microphones set up on it, facing about a hundred folding chairs. Elisa considers waiting for her breakfast companions, but doesn’t want to sit near nottennis unless she absolutely has to. So she hangs back and sits on the aisle in an otherwise unoccupied row.

The panel consists of a TV producer, a science fiction writer, a blogger whom everyone but Elisa seems to have read, and Betsy Orosco. Betsy has come in late; she is in fact eating a piece of toast. The other panelists, all men, steal glances at her that Elisa interprets as appraising. Betsy seems confident, in her element. She finishes the toast and sits with her hands folded, waiting. When ten o’clock arrives, they begin.

There is no moderator; the four speakers introduce themselves and each offers some opening comments on the subject. None of the four seems particularly comfortable around the other three. To Elisa’s dismay, the TV producer dominates — he shares stories about working with particular famous actors. The science fiction writer clearly dislikes him — he denigrates the narrative logic of the producer’s most popular show. The blogger tells jokes that fall flat, and Betsy, at first, appears as though she regrets coming at all. She tries, gamely enough, to talk about the actual physics of the multiverse, in much the way she presented it to Elisa in her office the year before. But here, it isn’t going over so well. She explains in detail, too much detail, the complex quantum requirements for a universe to be created, and the audience shifts in their seats. And when she tells them that travel among universes is largely impossible, several people actually groan.

“But you never know, right?” says the blogger.

“That’s right,” the TV producer says brightly, to mild laughter, “you never know!” By the time the audience begins raising questions, everyone seems exhausted, as if it’s midafternoon and they have been conferencing all day.

At some point Elisa feels a presence beside her and turns to find that the presumptive Patricia has taken a seat two down from her. She is wearing a floral print dress, clean new running shoes, and a crucifix around her neck. She is staring straight ahead. Her hands are folded in her lap and she remains perfectly still. Elisa smells perfume.

Someone in the front of the room, she thinks it’s RueTheDay, is asking Betsy a question. “You say we can’t travel back and forth between universes,” he says. “But what about our consciousness? You know, our awareness?”