Chapter 8

Self-Evident

Wilbur ended the ensuing pregnant silence with solemn deadpan: “There’s no evidence for that assertion.”

“I’m the evidence,” I retorted.

“Inconclusive at best, since everyone thinks you’re Ernest.”

“I’m telling you I must have travelled in time. It all fits.”

“No one is likely to believe that without conclusive evidence.”

“Like what?! A convenient, uniquely identifiable artefact from the period? Sorry, I forgot to pack luggage. Remember? No pockets!”

I looked long and hard at Wilbur, but could discern no reaction. His irritating alternation between emotionless passivity and lame humour seemed inhuman. Unreal…

“What am I talking about!?” I suddenly realised. “I’m simply dreaming I’ve travelled in time. Of course. It’s all perfectly consistent, which this dream has been from the start. If somewhat incomprehensible. I dreamt I woke up in my bedroom forty years in the future, but my bedroom was no longer there, nor my house, just some old trees still standing.” I turned a rapid circle, suddenly feeling manic. “I have to hand it to my subconscious. It knows what’s supposed to have happened in the last forty years even if I don’t.”

“Any chance,” said Wilbur, “you know what your subconscious intended by this?” He was staring at the ground near my feet. He bent down and ran his fingers along a line of burnt grass, its shape outlining a person, outstretched, reclining. Me. When I first ‘awoke’.

“I forgot about this,” I said, bending closer. Within and around the outline, the grass had grown detectably (it was Spring after all)—but along the outline’s centimetre width, there was only black stubble, burnt almost to the ground. “It was there when I woke up here. I have no idea why.”

Wilbur shot me an uncomfortable glance. “It looks a good match for your shape.”

“It is! Perfect as far as I can tell.”

“Would you mind verifying that?”

I did mind, thinking again of murder victims’ chalk outlines. But it was irrational. As much to prove that to myself as to help Wilbur, I lay down on the wet grass.

“Fits like a glove,” muttered Wilbur, oddly quiet. Almost concerned?

I stood hurriedly, brushed my damp clothes. “Do you know what it is?”

Wilbur shook his head, still staring at the outline. “It could be natural, but I doubt it.” He opened his mouth to speak then stopped before looking me in the eye. “Only a proper analysis could answer your question. It may be nothing but I’ll see if I can arrange something. So you woke up here then?”

“Yes. As I said.”

“Lying down?”

“Yes, on my back. The same position I was in when I was last in my bedroom.”

Again, Wilbur seemed to start to say something, then stopped and returned his attention to the outline.

“You suspect something,” I said, “don’t you? Tell me.”

“Not until I have some evidence. After proper analysis.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not long. Leave it to me… Is there anything else that happened after you ‘woke’ here that perhaps you also forgot to tell me?”

His voice and face betrayed no suspicion, nevertheless I felt it. Still, something held me back from telling him about the demon. A long hesitant pause. Finally: “Yes.” I thought his eyes widened in anticipation. “I stood on some kangaroo droppings. There, now you know as much as I do.”

Wilbur neither blinked nor even breathed it seemed. I doubted the bacteria on his skin were moving. A moment later, intonation-free: “That explains the smell.”

 

We barely spoke on the trip back, during which Wilbur seemed deep in thought. Not until we were very near Ernest’s home did conversation resume.

“Doesn’t it strike you,” said Wilbur, without any preamble, “that everything is too detailed and realistic to be a dream?”

“It can’t be real,” I said, certain, after a troubled pause. “So it must be a dream.”

“Why can’t it be real?”

“Because it’s forty years in the future! You know, I’m pretty sure I didn’t step out of the house saying, ‘Honey, I’m just taking the new time machine out for a spin round the century—be back before you know it.’”

Another granite wall impersonation later, Wilbur said, “There are other explanations.”

“Like yours? That I’m really Ernest? That I walked in my sleep, got a bump on the head, and woke up thinking I’m someone else from a different time!? It’s not possible.”

“What makes you so sure?” Wilbur pulled into Ernest’s driveway.

“Because I remember nothing! Not a single thing about Ernest’s life or this city is familiar. Not his house or his work or his ex-husband, or spouse or whatever title Mattie goes by. And yet I remember my own life—my real life—with all the detail you’d expect. I can’t believe any case of amnesia with or without false memories would be so thorough, that there wouldn’t be some chink in it that lets through a real memory, however minor.”

I moved to open the car door and exit, just as Wilbur replied, “It may just need more time.”

Ready and eager to reply, but irritated, I forcefully pushed open the door and began to move out—only for the car door to rebound and jam my left foot between it and the car frame. The door rebounded again to stop slightly ajar, just as I erupted with a shriek of pain.

“Are you okay?” said Wilbur.

“Never better,” I exclaimed between gritted teeth, grabbing at my foot. The pain was immense, and the pressure of my hands did nothing to relieve it. I re-channelled pain into anger and directed it at Wilbur. “This is just a custom we had back in 2030—of self-harming whenever we get lost in the future.”

Wilbur watched studiously, uselessly, as I gingerly slipped off the shoe and sock beneath—my two smallest toes were already darkening and swelling. When I touched the smallest, it hurt so sharply, I feared the worst. “I think this one’s broken.”

“Let’s get it looked at properly,” said Wilbur. He restarted the engine. I shut my door—with excessive caution—and he pulled out of the driveway.

Soon after, he drove past his house.

“Where are you taking me?” I said, grimacing, as the pain increased. “To a hospital?”

“No,” he replied, his eyes firmly on the road. “To Toby’s. He’s just a few streets along.”

“Who the hell is Toby?”

“Toby. Doctor Toby Morrow.”

Pain and confusion. “Can’t you look at it?” I moaned, feeling in no state to deal with anyone new.

Another rare moment when Wilbur looked genuinely uncertain. “I’d rather Toby handle it. It’s his specialty.”

“He specialises in broken bones?!” I replied, unconvinced.

“Not exactly. But he’s very good with sporting injuries and the like. And he is your doctor.”

“My doctor?! I mean, Ernest’s doctor?! I thought you were.”

“No,” came the quiet yet final reply.

“Then how come I woke up in your house?”

“I was looking after you. Toby made the diagnosis.”

New doubts surfaced. Were these two doctors in cahoots? Conducting some sort of psychological research, monitoring the behaviour of someone ripped from the familiar into the bizarre? Or was I perhaps the victim of a medical experiment gone wrong?

I kept these doubts to myself, but viewed Wilbur with renewed distrust.

Minutes later, we arrived at the other doctor’s—again, a house similar to Wilbur’s, not a multi-practice clinic—and I hobbled inside, supported by Wilbur, with one arm round his broad shoulders. By this stage, the part of my foot closest to the blackened toes was also swollen and bruised, and the entire area was throbbing, each pulse beat prominent and aggravating the pain. There were no other patients waiting for attention, so Toby (he insisted I call him this, claiming I’d done so for years) dealt with me immediately.

Toby was about fifty, surprisingly tall and athletic, with a thick shock of curly white hair. He had a benevolent but occasionally hesitant bedside manner which only revived my doubts as to his actual purpose—especially when he kept calling me ‘Ernest’. When I first objected, he took it in his stride (Wilbur, who had insisted on waiting in another room, must have told him about my ‘amnesia’). “O, yes,” he said, “forgot, sorry, force of habit.” But then, almost immediately, he reverted to calling me ‘Ernest’. After two or three more increasingly strident objections, each with no better result, I gave up.

His treatment of my injury was minimal. Holding what looked like a small camera over my foot, he turned its digital display towards me: an X-ray showing no broken bones. An injection followed: to reduce the swelling, he said, and to speed recovery and kill the pain. Then with what I first thought was a toothbrush, he drilled a small hole into the nail of my smallest toe—to allow the blood beneath to ooze out and release the pressure. The throbbing eased almost at once, though the sight of blood momentarily elevated my discomfort by, as usual, evoking a dreaded memory from my first year of secondary school: of a new and larger classmate who, upon hearing my surname, recited the saying “you can’t get blood from a stone,” then set out to disprove it by bashing the crap out of me. But the painkiller soon swung into action, so the memory did not persist. Indeed I soon felt almost nothing—at least from the foot. I felt much of another sort though: confusion, irritation, distrust.

After the blood-letting, Toby offhandedly asked, “How’s the other medication going?”

“What other medication?” I replied, truly ignorant.

“The heart medication, Ernest.”

Alarm bells started clamouring in my head, sending me straight into denial. “Look, I don’t know what you think you gave Ernest, but you didn’t give it to me.”

“O,” said Toby, discomfort apparent. “Well, um, perhaps I should have put it another way then: have you had any chest pains lately?”

His question almost gave me a chest pain on the spot. How could he have known? Especially if he thought I was Ernest? Too dumbfounded to think straight, I soon found myself dutifully answering his question. “Not since before I woke up in Wilbur’s room.”

“Good,” said Toby, proudly. “Very good. It would appear the medication is working.”

“What medication?”

“The one I gave you a fortnight ago. I mean, the one—you know—for your heart defect.”

My entire body shuddered involuntarily.

Toby frowned with obvious concern. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “As I’ve explained. Really. I mean, the medication appears to be working. And as long as you see me annually for a booster shot, you’ll be perfectly all right. We have your condition under control, Ernest, so please please don’t trouble yourself about it further.”

“Did you say heart defect?” I said worriedly.

“Yes. I thought… Have you forgotten the tests you undertook?”

“I never took them. How often do I have to repeat it: I’m not Ernest, my name is Steven.”

He opened his mouth to speak but decided against it. Instead, he smiled broadly, and, with an obvious attempt at casual good humour, said, “Yours really is a most stubborn amnesia.”

“It is not amnesia. I know who I am.”

Toby’s smile vanished. Meekly, he turned his attention to my toe.

“What sort of heart defect?” I asked. I needn’t have bothered. Toby’s explanation was far too detailed and full of medical terms for me to follow. All I could gather was that there was some sort of problem with the aorta that had first made itself apparent about a month before in the form of sudden crippling chest pains which sounded all too familiar. Medication was supposed to have compensated for the aorta’s defect, and prevented the pain from returning.

Over the last two days, I hadn’t given much thought to my chest pains—they’d been totally absent since I’d woken in Wilbur’s room, and there’d been so much else to occupy me. On the few occasions I had thought of them, I felt increasingly hopeful they were not caused by heart trouble but by lack of physical activity. I’d done quite a bit of gentle walking since this dream had started—by my standards at least—and perhaps this had kept them at bay. Or perhaps my subconscious had simply chosen to exclude them from this dream.

Now, I was less confident. I even began to consider whether the true explanation for the recent absence of pain was just as Toby indicated. Could I really be an amnesiac Ernest? Feeling more uncomfortable and displaced than ever, I found myself explaining to Toby my recent history of chest pains and the tests I’d taken.

“I’m very impressed, Ernest,” said Toby when I concluded. “Your historical research is outstanding. At least one of those tests hasn’t been conducted for twenty years or more.”

“Well, they were conducted on me only a week ago,” I asserted, anger suddenly rising.

“If my memory is correct…” said Toby, before suddenly replacing his professional smile with a worried look suggestive of having put his foot in his mouth. “I mean, well, that is to say, a week ago, according to my records, you had your follow-up tests, which confirmed the medication was working.”

“You never gave me that medication.” The anger had not yet peaked. “I’m not Ernest.”

Toby looked taken aback, but stuck to his guns. “You know, a simple test would prove you’ve been given the medication.”

My anger turned to a stomach-churning mixture of hope and doubt. Here was a chance to prove I was who I said I was—and also a chance to disprove it. All the events of recent days crowded in on me, filling me with uncertainty. I hesitated…

But not for long. Whoever said ‘no news is good news’ was being selective. As often as not, uncertainty granted by an absence of information is far more crippling even than bad news.

“Then please give me the test,” I said finally. “And get Wilbur in here, too. I want him to see this.”

Toby obliged. After quickly explaining the purpose of the blood sample to Wilbur, he took a few millilitres from my arm, and placed it in a small electronic device. A spectrometer, he explained, keying in the name of the drug he was looking for via a small keypad on its side. “It will take just a few seconds.”

As I waited nervously for the instrument to do its work, I realised the test might in the end prove nothing. While lying unconscious in Wilbur’s room, Toby or Wilbur or anyone else could have injected me with the drug they were now testing for. It might have been planned all along.

The spectrometer beeped. Toby checked the display. With baited breath, I watched his face register surprise.

“This— I…,” he faltered. Seconds later: “It’s not there”