The Reality of Realities.

I was angered by the blaring alarm of the clock radio, which had gone on far too long. I won’t explain why, as my reason is petty and deeply harbored in silly resentment, but the subject was clearly fresh in my mind as I gave in to saving my sanity and stomped loudly up the stairs.

‘You better be dead.’ There was my cheery thought upon entering the master bedroom. My husband lay, still warm and breathing, under that gray state issued comforter. How he could sleep through that monstrous sound was as a great mystery to me as how he could be awoken by the sound of my opening a fresh bar of chocolate in the farthest corner of our garage, which sat a good six rooms away.

“Honey.” I shook him gently, staving off the desire to drag him by the foot out of bed to save myself the traditional frustrations of his morning wake. Turning on the light, I prodded him again. “Honey. Wakey-wakey time.” Those hideously peppy words were his, and I hated them when I’d been the one under this assault, and how I loved saying it to him now, just to punish him. Being woken by ‘Wakey-wakey time’ was definitely a fate he deserved.

Mumbling something incoherent and dark, he pulled the cover over his head. His typical response to my efforts. “You’re running late.” I warned. His eyes opened long enough to peer at the clock. “I’m not running late,” he said, apparently mystified by my glaring misjudgment of the time, but his brain had now become engaged in thought, ensuring his lucidity…and that completed my part of the deal. He stood up and stretched and made for the bathroom while I escaped back to the hall. Grumpy as he was when he woke in the morning, retreat was always best called for.

The alarm used to wake me…the first time, every time, though I admit on occasion I turned it off, intent on ignoring it for a time. And there he would burst cheerfully into the room and insist I become bright eyed and bushy tailed and other such incredible nonsense. Freed of that commitment to the world outside by his very well paying job, I hoped never again find myself placed under so callous a yoke.

Breakfast, which always consisted of the full compliment of unrefined grains, nonfat dairy products, and tasty cut up fruit, was dutifully placed next to his computer, where I knew his next stop would be. Checking emails and forum messages and reviewing his latest orders from the company was as much a part of his morning ritual as rolling that insufferable lint tape holder over every inch of his body. He did like to appear dapper though, and always dressed properly for whatever place he was next off to, as dress varied from world to world.

A fast kiss and he was into ‘the box’ and transported a dimension away.

I’d long stopped trying to imagine what that was like. It was pointless to try, in any case, as those few who were lucky to have the job always said something to the effect of, “It’s not like anything you could imagine,” a useless description to anyone. I’m sure I could have come up with something upon which to compare the sensation, had I been allowed to accompany him on any one of these little missions, but instead I could only watch the rippling red neon flashes dissipate into the ether behind him, still, as always, clueless.

'The box’, as we called it, was latest in the line of the newer model Mallet-TB 2000’s. The old one they’d carted away some months ago, under secrecy of the night. Escorted from the house when this swap occurred, I was left laughing in a hotel room, amused to think they feared I might somehow understand its complicated installation and sell this great secret to the highest bidder. I barely understood how the toaster worked, but it was all necessary precaution, and I should not feel at all insulted by their concerns, and of this they most kindly insisted.

I did know how some things worked though. How my husband had come to secure this job, I’ll tell you, had far more to do with what ‘I’ knew than what they’d have you believe. I knew the man who ran this company had slept with my cousin, Louise, and I knew his wife would find that information most extremely distasteful…should it somehow be imparted to her.

While I’m sorry to say, Louise’s confidence was not well placed in me, I’m not sorry to say that I used this information to our utmost advantage, writing a series of letters to this man, a certain Mr. Benton Thrift, in demands that my husband be made gainfully employed by him and his company, Benton Construction, if he wished his wife to remain, as I put it, ‘blissfully unawares.’ This was done at a time when jobs were scarce…and we’d been reduced to government assistance.

Not that assistance was to be greatly minded, as it kept us alive and fed, but the monthly visits from the public health inspectors had really grown on my nerves. Rushing to hide the butter and salt under the ancient photo albums in the box in the attic, and making sure I’d donned my lightest clothes, as I dared not tip the scale again. Suffering the humiliation of that Winston County instructional van pulling up in my driveway, with its ‘Education is the key to healthy eating habits! We can help you do it’ slogan emblazed across it in bright green letters for all my neighbors to see…was not something I wished for again anytime soon.

At the time I’d made Mr. Benton Thrift’s initial acquaintance, I’ll admit I had no idea of what was actually done at his company. Employment meant an income, regardless of the task, but I would have been just as delighted to see my husband given the job of cleaning their offices, as in him doing any kind of construction. I certainly never expected them to have him hopping around the omniverse.

I suspect that at first, they used him in this endeavor because he was…expendable, and if perhaps he was unable to return, Benton Construction would now be rid of one half of their problem. I always wondered what they would have bothered then to do with me. Fortunately though, he did return, and he continued to return quite diligently, test after test after test. His experience in these dimensional jaunts soon made him a reliable authority, and two years later, with the program in place, he was given a team to oversee.

You’ll have to excuse me, reader, but I’ve just stepped away now to have myself a chat with Mrs. Albright from down the road. Seems a her inspection did not go well, and she’s been assigned to extra exercise for the next few weeks. “But, oh, we all have fun at exercise, don’t we…with our matching red, white and blue gym suits, looking so thin and patriotic!” I teased. I raised her spirits again. She knew I would commiserate with her on this dreadful news…as I, myself, had endured the same predicament twice the year before.

I can’t say we didn’t enjoy exercise at first, as we’d had a good deal of fun with the sports. Aging old ladies rushing about with a soccer ball, red faced and laughing…those had been good times. But budget cuts as they were, the program had eventually been reduced to an hour of repetitive calisthenics, led by a tall tyrannical woman we’d all soon dubbed ‘The Gestapo.’ We were healthy little things though, when we weren’t keeling over from any other assortment of diseases.

I liked Mrs. Albright, a wonderful friend, as dauntless as she was. I would have loved to have snuck her some of my ‘forbiddens’, but I didn’t dare take the risk. I was wary enough having them under my own roof, although homes were rarely searched anymore. I could be sure they find reason to do so though, should I manage to weigh poorly again…thus at times I was forced to pass up the ‘forbiddens’ my husband brought home to me.

These other worlds he worked in didn’t all have such restraints. Not yet, anyhow. Of course, should our government find out the true nature of Benton Constructions experimentations, I’m sure they would have rushed to extol the virtues of their national programs to all these other places. I found the thought distasteful, if I must be honest with you, as I still knew the pleasures of baked potatoes, all slathered with salt and butter.

I knew coffee and sugar and ice cream and soda, and some products we’d never invented, the best by far being a sweet creation from U23 that they called, “Krutters,” a caloric treat beyond belief, and the only way I could describe it would be to say, ‘it’s beyond your imagination.’ My husband was a good fellow to bring me back these tidbits from other realities, knowing the dangers as he did, and I received them with all due affection, as it was much akin to receiving flowers, back when flowers could still be cut for gifts.

So often I wished we could enter the box together and leave this world behind, but that would require the finding of a universe where we both no longer existed, an act that would require a great deal luck, as well as resources and time. One could not visit a universe where one was still actively living. My husband, in his multiple ‘test’ jaunts, had the good fortune of being quite dead of all of them, although he admitted to me tearfully one night that he found the idea unnerving.

In any case, at some point, with his many safe universes now noted, his men were slowly brought in. I used to tell myself they’d looked for the worlds were all five of his team had passed away, but let’s face it, readers, shall we? These were young men not prone to an untimely demise in this universe or any other. I may have, at one point, not thought much on this conundrum, but at a later point…I did. My husband ‘cleared the way’ for them… it was the only explanation. How he did this, I do not know, but assumptions can certainly be made. He’d killed their otherworldly others, to allow them entrance in.

I still greatly wished we could escape off to one of these other realities together, as insufferable as ours had become, but each time I again brought up the topic, he'd only laugh and said, ‘maybe, someday’. Later he answered my begging with things like ‘perhaps’ and ‘you never know’, but eventually he explained to me the reason the real answer was ‘no’. He couldn’t bring himself to kill me in any other world. Although it confirmed the truth of my notion, how could I fault him this admission? It was a dear thing for him to say, really.

I guess the fact that I still existed in these other places was at least a pleasant indication, for it seemed that…whatever was your status in some of these realities…was frequently your status in most all of them. Through many months of extensive personal research, my husband had figured this much out. (And no doubt that’s what caused his teary display on that one sad night) This was the reality of all realities…no matter where you were, there were still the bonds of fate to contend with.

Originally, my husband, after clearing way for his team on numerous other worlds, was tasked with simple categorization. What each world offered by way of existence was what they wanted to know. The laws and wars, lifestyles and pleasures, religions and beliefs, and of all their advancements, large and small, as not all were desirable.

After this was accomplished, these business trips for Benton Construction took a sadly nefarious turn. Mr. Benton Thrift sold escape to these worlds for an extremely obscene fee, and my husband and his team would ‘clear the way’ for these paying clients, as it was required of them. A shame Mr. Thrift thought only of the almighty dollar, as there certainly had to be better use for this knowledge, but then he did take the enormous risk of making the original multi-million dollar investment. This did not excuse him in my eyes, but who was I to argue otherwise. Besides, my husband was extremely well paid for his work, and I didn’t have to hear ‘Wakey-wakey’ directed towards me anymore.

I came to find out one day that Mr. Benton Thrift did not plan to be long in this world, as he seemed to be considering making a rather permanent jaunt for himself. You’ll have to forgive me here, readers, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I know this only because I had very recently snooped on my husband’s computer. It seemed Mr. Thrift has ordered himself ‘cleared’ on one of these other worlds, and he also asked that it appear a disappearance, as he wished to step into the shoes of this ‘other’ Mr. Thrift, as he was a well off business magnate on G17, with a much more attractive wife.

The world he chose for himself seemed optimal, I admit. In reading its fact sheet, I grew quite jealous of our slippery Mr. Thrift. It was a world that was peaceful and free of rules, where people had wonderful lives. Reading that is what caused me to decide to speak again to this man, or should I say ‘demand an audience with him’, as I burst into his office one day, and whereupon, boldly demanded he kill the other me when he arrived on the other side. Then my husband and I could come ourselves, as this was my ultimate desire. And then I threatened him, and how I threatened him! Not just with Louise, but with full exposition to the world of his works…which I have only just in part outlined here.

I found it odd he looked taken aback at the mention of murder, as much as he’d ordered it done. He seemed quite aghast at my request, but it was not for the reasons I suspected.

“I cannot, dear lady, kill you there, as there you’re already dead,” came his unexpected response. I admit I didn’t know what to make of this.

“How would you know this?” I asked, suspicious, as I knew he’d not yet been there.

“Your husband spoke of it, and more than once,” was his adamant explanation. “He said you were dead on almost all the worlds he’d visited over time.”

“How can this be?” I found myself lowered by my weak knees to a seat on the black Rotola leather chair that faced his endless desk.

“You’d been brutally murdered in your sleep, or so your husband claimed.” Mr. Thrift shook his head. “And he’s been much afraid to tell you.”

That evening, I questioned my husband at length as to the truth of my non-existence. He insisted that Mr. Thrift had lied, and he was in a furious state that I had destroyed his fine business relationship in this most unceremonious way. He stormed off into ‘the box’ that evening, and didn’t reappear for several days.

But murdered? Me? In every world? The idea of this now terrified me, and it brought me to my next question. Had I ever had the occasion to have known anyone so capable of taking a life? And yes, I’m afraid, readers, I too immediately realized the answer to that question. I knew only one man who readily killed…and I routinely made him his dinner.

I stayed awake late each night contemplating that worrisome thought, which soon turned into another. What did he do in these other worlds, that he didn’t want me along, if I’d already been dead in each? He could be up to all kinds of wrongs which I would never be privy to. There could be other women…and he just like a sailor with one in each port. Why else wouldn’t he want me along, or be willing to escape with me? He’d laughed when I’d asked it. The nerve of this. How dare he, readers, how dare he!

It was then I decided…I would see him dead, before I’d let him kill me.

He returned, my dear husband, a few mornings later, and apologized, bringing me a real package of bacon from G48, the kind we always both loved. He insisted again that Mr. Thrift was lying, but he said, he was sorry for having grown so angry with me. The stress of the job was destroying him, he said, and he could take it no longer. “If you really want, love, I’ll kill you somewhere,” he promised. “And then we’ll run away.”

I raised my eyebrow at his words. So he was capable of doing the deed…as I suspected. Very interesting news, considering. He’d probably try to kill me tonight while I slept and escape nice and clean through the box. But I’d not let it happen that way.

The next morning the alarm went off on our clock radio and it blared for a good week’s time. My husband lay cold and unbreathing, beneath that gray state issued comforter, now greatly stained red with his blood, and it would be the coroner that would drag him by the foot now from our bed, as I no longer would no longer be bound to that duty.

I had jumped into the box, directly after, and escaped to G17. I knew I was dead there, as Mr. Thrift had kindly informed me, and he was technically correct, for a millisecond after I arrived, I exploded into fiery little bits.

If only I’d known how cunning a man Benton Thrift had really been. It seemed I’d over stepped my bounds by threatening him yet again, and he’d decided it best to be rid of us both, using only his knowledge at hand. In truth what my husband had told him was that he’d discovered all his deaths had been murders in his sleep, while my deaths, he’d found, had been suicides, but not on G17.

~~~~~