The voicemail arrived on a Thursday, though Elya’s phone hadn’t rung. It simply appeared in her
inbox, already played, as if it had been waiting for her to notice it.
“Hi, it’s me,” a man’s voice said. There was warmth in the tone, the easy intimacy of long
acquaintance. “Just calling to say I miss you. It’s not the same here without you, my love. Call me
when you get this.”
Elya had been back from her strange journey to Elsewhere for two weeks, settling into a life that felt
both familiar and new. The reintegration of the parts of herself she had lost—or abandoned, or
forgotten—had changed her in subtle but significant ways. She laughed more easily. She noticed
beauty in places she had previously overlooked. She allowed herself moments of wonder, of
uncertainty, of not knowing and being comfortable with that state.
Her apartment, once a carefully controlled environment where everything had its place and
purpose, had become more lived-in, more personal. Books lay open on tables, evidence of reading
interrupted by a new thought or impulse. A half-finished painting stood on an easel by the window,
her first attempt at art since college. Music played more often than not, filling the rooms with sound
and emotion.
She had even taken to talking to her reflection again, not as a separate entity but as a facet of
herself, a way of processing thoughts and feelings that might otherwise remain locked inside. The
mirror was just a mirror now, the reflection just a reflection, but the dialogue felt genuine, a
conversation between aspects of a self that was multiple rather than singular, fluid rather than
fixed.
It was in this state of newfound integration and ease that the voicemail arrived, disrupting the
balance she had been carefully cultivating.
The timestamp indicated the message had been left three years earlier, on a day Elya remembered
clearly because nothing of note had happened—a Tuesday so ordinary that its very blandness had
stood out amid the more eventful days surrounding it.
She didn’t recognize the voice.
She played the message again. And again. Each time, she waited for recognition to dawn, for her
memory to supply the face that belonged to that voice, the name of the man who had called her
“my love” with such casual certainty.
Nothing came.
She checked her call history, but there was no record of a call from the number, not on that day or
any other. When she tried to call it back, an automated voice informed her that the number was no
longer in service.
The message disturbed her more than it might have before her experiences with the independent
reflection and the nameless town. Once, she would have dismissed it as a technical glitch, a
message meant for someone else that had somehow found its way to her phone. Now, she sensed
a deeper mystery, another boundary between reality and possibility being breached.
She spent the rest of the day distracted, the man’s voice playing in her mind like a halfremembered song. There was something about it—not just the words but the tone, the cadence—
that felt familiar, as if she should know who it was, as if the connection was there but just beyond
her grasp.
That night, unable to sleep, Elya began searching through old boxes she had packed away years
ago—photographs, letters, mementos from relationships long since ended. In the bottom of the
last box, she found an envelope she didn’t remember. Inside were photographs: Elya and a man,
arms around each other, smiling at the camera. Elya and the same man in a restaurant, raising
glasses in a toast. Elya asleep on a couch, the man watching her with an expression of such
tenderness it made her breath catch.
The man was a stranger. Tall, with dark hair and eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
Handsome in a lived-in way, like a favorite sweater or a well-used book. In every photo, they looked
happy. In every photo, they looked like they belonged together.
But Elya had no memory of him. No memory of the moments captured in the photographs. No
memory of being loved by this man who looked at her as if she were the answer to a question he
had been asking his entire life.
She turned the photos over, looking for dates, names, any clue to the identity of the man who had
apparently been part of her life. On the back of one, she found a single line written in handwriting
she didn’t recognize:
“Remember when you promised you would never forget me?”
Elya sat on the floor of her apartment, surrounded by the evidence of a relationship she had no
recollection of, and felt the boundaries of her own existence begin to blur. Was she losing her
memory? Had some trauma caused her to forget entire chapters of her life? Or was there a deeper
mystery at play?
The next day, she showed the photographs to her oldest friend, Mei, the one constant in a life
characterized by departures.
“I don’t know who this is,” Mei said, studying the images with a frown. “Are you sure these are
yours? Could they have been mixed up with someone else’s photos?”
“They were in my box,” Elya said. “And that’s definitely me.”
Mei looked again, her frown deepening. “That does look like you,” she agreed. “But also…not quite?
I don’t know how to explain it. Like it’s you but from a slightly different angle? Does that make any
sense?”
It didn’t make sense. Or rather, it made a kind of sense that belonged to dreams and madness, not
to waking reality. A sense that suggested Elya was not simply losing memories, but collecting
departures that had never been hers to begin with.
That night, the phone rang. When Elya answered, there was only silence on the line, a silence so
complete it seemed to have weight and texture.
“Hello?” she said. “Is anyone there?”
The silence stretched, expanded, became a presence of its own. Then, just as Elya was about to
hang up, a voice spoke—the same voice from the voicemail.
“You promised you would never forget me,” the man said. “But you did, didn’t you? You forgot me
completely.”
“Who are you?” Elya whispered.
“Someone who was never here,” the man said, and the line went dead.
When Elya looked at the photographs again, they were blank—just empty squares of paper where
images had been. When she checked her voicemail, the message was gone. When she examined
her call history, there was no record of the night’s conversation.
Only the echo of the man’s voice remained, a ghost in her memory, whispering of a love that had
never existed and a promise she had never made but had somehow broken nonetheless.
2
The dream began as dreams often do, with a sense of being somewhere familiar yet strange, of
knowing and not knowing at the same time. Elya found herself walking down a city street she
recognized as being near her apartment, though the details were wrong—buildings taller, sidewalks
wider, the quality of light different, softer, more golden than the harsh fluorescence of reality.
She was looking for someone. This knowledge was in her body, in the urgency of her stride, in the
way she scanned the faces of passersby. But she didn’t know who she was seeking, only that
finding them was important, necessary, a matter of life or death—though whether hers or theirs,
she couldn’t say.
Then she saw him, standing on a corner half a block ahead. The man from the photographs, the
owner of the voice on the phone. He was looking at his watch, then up at the street, expectant,
waiting. For her, she knew. He was waiting for her.
Elya quickened her pace, suddenly desperate to reach him, to speak to him, to understand who he
was and why she had forgotten him. But the faster she walked, the further away he seemed to be,
the space between them expanding impossibly, the city block stretching into infinity.
“Wait!” she called, breaking into a run. “Please wait!”
He looked up at the sound of her voice, his face lighting with recognition and relief. He raised a
hand in greeting, or perhaps in farewell—the gesture ambiguous, containing both hello and
goodbye in its sweep.
Then, just as Elya thought she was finally closing the distance between them, the man turned and
stepped into a passing taxi that had materialized at the curb. The car pulled away, merging into
traffic, becoming indistinguishable from the flow of other vehicles.
Elya woke with tears on her cheeks, a sense of loss so profound it felt physical, a pain in her chest
like something vital had been torn away. The dream lingered, more vivid than the reality of her
darkened bedroom, more immediate than the sound of distant traffic filtering through her window.
She rose, moving through the apartment like a sleepwalker, drawn to the box where she had found
the photographs. They were still there, still blank, empty rectangles of glossy paper. But now, when she touched them, she felt a strange warmth, as if they retained some residual energy from
whatever images they had once contained.
On impulse, she took one of the blank photos and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that,
searching for any trace of the image that had been there. Nothing. Just blankness. She was about to
put it back when she noticed something—a faint watermark or impression, visible only from a
certain angle, in a particular light.
Holding her breath, Elya tilted the photo until the impression became clearer. It wasn’t an image,
but a word, pressed into the paper as if someone had written on another sheet laid on top of the
photo:
“Elsewhere.”
The word sent a jolt through her, a connection forming between the mysterious man and the town
that forgot its name. Was he from there? Was he, like the waitress with her papery skin and the
curator with his cardigan, a collection of forgotten fragments, a discarded aspect of someone’s
identity?
Or was he, like the other Elya, a part of Elya herself that had been set aside, abandoned, forgotten?
The questions multiplied, each spawning new uncertainties, new possibilities. Elya spent the rest
of the night researching amnesia, dissociative disorders, the psychology of memory and forgetting.
She found case studies of people who had lost months or years of their lives, who woke up one day
unable to recognize loved ones, unable to recall significant events. But none of these cases quite
matched her situation. She hadn’t lost all memory of a period of time; she had lost all memory of a
specific person, a relationship that seemed to have been significant, intimate, central to her life.
And then there were the photographs that had blanked themselves, the voicemail that had
disappeared, the phone call that left no trace in her call history. These weren’t symptoms of
psychological disorder; they were events that defied the ordinary laws of physics and technology.
In the morning, exhausted but determined, Elya did something she had never done before: she
called in sick to work without actually being ill. The old Elya, the one who prized control and
predictability above all else, would never have done this. But the new Elya, the integrated Elya,
recognized that some mysteries were more important than maintaining routines, that some
questions needed to be pursued even at the cost of disrupting the careful order of daily life.
She spent the day retracing her steps from three years ago, the time when the voicemail had
ostensibly been left. She visited the places she had frequented then—cafés, bookstores, the park
where she sometimes went to read. She spoke to the barista who had been working at her favorite coffee shop for a decade, the owner of the secondhand bookstore who remembered her
preference for obscure poetry, the ice cream vendor who had been setting up his cart in the same
spot in the park since Elya was a child.
None of them remembered her with a man matching the description of the stranger in the
photographs.
“You’ve always been alone,” the bookstore owner said, not unkindly. “At least whenever you’ve
come in here. I’ve always thought of you as a solitary soul. Not lonely, just… complete in yourself.”
The words stung, though Elya couldn’t have said why. Was it the suggestion that she had always
been alone, that the relationship evidenced in the photographs had never existed? Or was it the
description of her as “complete in herself,” when she had only recently begun to feel that
completeness, after reclaiming the parts of herself she had abandoned?
As she left the bookstore, a movement across the street caught her eye. A tall figure, dark-haired,
familiar in stance and gait. The man from the photographs, walking away from her, turning a corner,
disappearing from view.
Elya ran, dodging traffic, ignoring the angry honks of drivers forced to brake suddenly. She reached
the corner, rounded it at speed, and found… nothing. An empty sidewalk. A street devoid of
pedestrians. No sign of the man she had glimpsed, as if he had vanished into thin air.
She stood there, breathing hard, doubt creeping in. Had she actually seen him? Or had her mind,
primed by the photographs and the voicemail, conjured an image of someone who didn’t exist, who
had never existed?
“Excuse me,” a voice said behind her.
Elya turned, hope leaping in her chest, only to find an elderly woman regarding her with concern.
“Are you all right, dear? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” Elya said automatically. Then, on impulse, she added, “Did you see a man come this
way? Tall, dark-haired, wearing a gray coat?”
The woman shook her head. “I’ve been sitting on that bench for the past hour,” she said, indicating
a wrought-iron seat nearby. “No one’s come down this street in all that time. That’s why I noticed
you—you’re the first person I’ve seen.”
Elya thanked her and walked away, confusion and disappointment warring within her. Was she
losing her mind? Was the stress of the past few weeks, of the strange experiences with her
reflection and the town that forgot its name, causing her to hallucinate, to see things that weren’t
there? As she passed a storefront, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window glass. For a
moment, she thought she saw not her own image but that of the man from the photographs,
walking beside her, matching her pace exactly. She whirled, but there was no one there. When she
looked back at the window, the reflection was her own again, solitary and confused.
That night, Elya dreamed again of the man. This time, they were in her apartment, sitting across
from each other at her kitchen table. The space between them was filled with photographs, spread
out like tiles in a mosaic, each one showing the two of them together—at a beach she had never
visited, at a restaurant she had never eaten in, at a concert she had never attended.
“Who are you?” Elya asked, the question emerging not as a fearful demand but as a plea for
understanding.
“I’m the possibility you rejected,” the man said, his voice soft with regret. “The path you didn’t take.
The love you didn’t choose.”
“I don’t understand,” Elya said. “How can I have rejected something I don’t remember? How can I
have chosen not to love someone I never met?”
The man smiled, a sad expression that contained no bitterness, only acceptance. “You’ve been
collecting goodbyes all your life,” he sai
The man smiled, a sad expression that contained no bitterness, only acceptance. “You’ve been
collecting goodbyes all your life,” he said. “Cataloging departures, preserving the moment of
farewell. But you never noticed that you were also collecting hellos that never happened,
beginnings that never began, possibilities that never materialized.”
He reached across the table and touched one of the photographs. At his touch, the image changed,
showing not the two of them together but Elya alone, in the same setting but without the man.
Another touch, another photograph transformed from togetherness to solitude.
“We never existed,” the man said, his form beginning to fade, becoming translucent like the other
Elya had in the grove at Elsewhere. “But we could have. In another version of your life, in another
branch of possibility, we did.”
“Wait,” Elya said, reaching for him as he continued to fade. “Tell me who you are. Tell me your
name.”
“My name is what you would have called me,” he said, now little more than an outline, a suggestion
of presence. “I am whoever you would have loved, had you allowed yourself to love.”
And then he was gone, and Elya was alone at the table with photographs that showed only herself,
a solitary figure in a series of moments that might have been shared but never were.She woke with tears on her face and a name on her lips, a name she had never heard before but
which felt right, necessary, inevitable:
“Michael.”
3
The next day, with the name burning in her mind like a brand, Elya did something she would never
have done before her experiences with the independent reflection and the town called Elsewhere:
she visited a psychic.
The woman operated out of a small storefront in a part of the city Elya rarely visited, a
neighborhood of family-owned ethnic restaurants and shops selling incense and crystals and
books on astrology. A sign in the window promised “Connections to What Has Been Lost.”
Inside, the space was dimly lit, the air heavy with the scent of sandalwood. The psychic, a woman
of indeterminate age with silver-streaked hair and eyes so dark they appeared black in the low light,
sat behind a table covered in silk.
“You’re looking for someone,” she said as Elya sat across from her. Not a question but a statement
of fact.
“Yes,” Elya admitted. “Someone named Michael. Someone who… who might not exist.”
The psychic nodded, unsurprised, as if clients regularly came to her seeking people who weren’t
real. “Existence is more complicated than most people understand,” she said. “There are many
ways to be, many ways to not be. Many layers of reality, overlapping, intersecting, diverging.”
She took Elya’s hands in hers, her touch cool and dry, like paper that has been stored too long. “Tell
me about this Michael.”
Elya hesitated, then recounted everything—the voicemail, the photographs that had appeared and
then blanked themselves, the dreams, the glimpse of a man who vanished around a corner. As she
spoke, the psychic’s eyes remained fixed on her face, not blinking, not judging, simply absorbing
each word as if it were a drop of water and she a plant dying of thirst.
When Elya finished, the psychic was silent for a long moment. Then she released Elya’s hands and
leaned back, her expression thoughtful.
“You’ve been to Elsewhere,” she said finally.
It wasn’t a question, but Elya answered anyway. “Yes.”
“Few find their way there,” the psychic said. “Fewer still return. And almost none come back whole,
as you seem to have done.””You know about Elsewhere?” Elya asked, hope flaring in her chest. “About what it is, what it
means?”
The psychic smiled, a small movement of lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “I know what has been
whispered, what has been glimpsed. A place for lost things, for forgotten things, for things that
might have been but never were. A place where the boundaries between possibility and actuality
are thin, permeable.”
She took a deck of cards from a drawer in the table, not the familiar tarot deck Elya had expected
but something older-looking, the cards larger and thicker, their edges soft with use. She shuffled
them with practiced hands, then laid three in a row between herself and Elya.
“Your Michael,” she said, turning over the first card to reveal an image of a door standing alone in a
field, opening onto darkness, “is not a person as you and I understand personhood. He is a
possibility, a potential that was never actualized. A life you might have lived, a love you might have
known, had you made different choices at crucial moments.”
She turned the second card, which showed a mirror reflecting not the face of the viewer but a
landscape, mountains and sky where a human form should be. “Like your reflection, the one that
took on a life of its own, he is a part of you that became separate, that achieved a kind of autonomy.
But while the reflection was made up of parts you had rejected or forgotten, this Michael is made
up of experiences you never had, choices you never made.”
The third card showed a tree with many branches, some thick and sturdy, others thin and withering.
On each branch was a small human figure, identical in form but engaged in different activities. “In
some version of your life, in some branch of possibility, you met this Michael. You loved him. You
were loved by him. That version of you, that potential Elya, is as real in her reality as you are in
yours. And just as you became aware of your reflection, of the town called Elsewhere, you have
become aware of her, of the life she is living in parallel to your own.”
Elya stared at the cards, at the images that seemed to shift and change the longer she looked at
them, like pictures in a dream that refuse to hold still. “Is he trying to contact me? To cross over into
my… my branch of possibility?”
The psychic gathered the cards back into the deck, her movements deliberate, almost ceremonial.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is you who is reaching out to him, to that other life. The boundaries
between possibilities are not fixed; they can be crossed, under certain circumstances, by certain
people. You have already crossed one such boundary, when you went to Elsewhere and returned.””How do I find him?” Elya asked, the question emerging from some place deeper than conscious
thought. “How do I reach that other branch, that other possibility?”
The psychic regarded her with an expression that might have been pity or might have been
admiration. “Are you sure that’s what you want? To leave this life, this reality, for one that might be
no better, might even be worse? To abandon what is for what might have been?”
Elya hesitated, the questions forcing her to examine her motives, her desires. What was she
seeking, really? Escape from a life that, despite her recent integration, still felt incomplete?
Validation of her strange experiences, proof that she wasn’t losing her mind? Or something deeper,
more fundamental—a connection to a part of herself, a potential self, that had been lost or never
realized?
“I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “I just know that I need to understand. I need to see for myself
what might have been, who I might have been.”
The psychic nodded, accepting this answer without judgment. “There is a way,” she said. “But it is
not without risk. The boundaries between possibilities are strongest where they intersect, where
the branches come closest to touching. Find such a place, and you may be able to cross over, to
glimpse that other life. But be warned: those who cross between possibilities sometimes forget
which is their original reality. They become lost, drifting between branches, never fully existing in
any of them.”
“How do I find such a place?” Elya asked. “How do I recognize it?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” the psychic said, her voice growing distant, as if she were already
withdrawing from the conversation, from this reality. “It will be familiar and strange at once, a place
that exists in multiple possibilities simultaneously. A place of power, of transition. A threshold.”
She fell silent, her eyes closing, her hands folding in her lap. After a moment, she spoke again, her
voice different now—more ordinary, less oracular. “That will be fifty dollars,” she said, opening her
eyes and looking at Elya with none of the intensity of moments before. “Cash only.”
Elya paid and left, stepping from the dimly lit, incense-heavy air of the psychic’s shop into the bright
normality of the street. Had the woman been a fraud, spinning a tale designed to extract money
from the gullible? Or had she truly known something about Elsewhere, about the nature of
possibility, about the man called Michael who existed in another branch of reality?
Elya wasn’t sure. But as she walked back toward her apartment, she found herself looking at the
city with new eyes, searching for places that might serve as thresholds between possibilities,
places where the boundaries might be thin enough to cross.That night, she dreamed again of Michael. They were in a park she recognized, a small green space
not far from her apartment. They sat side by side on a bench, not touching but close enough that
she could feel the warmth of his body, could smell the faint scent of his cologne—something with
notes of cedar and bergamot.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, his gaze fixed on the distance, on a point beyond the trees
that bordered the park. “But the connection is weak, intermittent. It’s hard to maintain contact
across the branches.”
“The psychic said there are places where the boundaries are thinner,” Elya said. “Places where the
branches come close to touching.”
Michael nodded. “Yes. They’re called nexus points. Places that exist in multiple possibilities with
minimal variation. This park is one such place. It exists in my reality almost exactly as it does in
yours.”
He turned to look at her, his eyes reflecting the dappled sunlight that filtered through the leaves
above them. “If you want to cross over, to see the life we might have had together, you need to
come here. To this bench, at twilight, when the light is neither day nor night. The in-between time
for the in-between place.”
“And then what?” Elya asked. “How do I cross over?”
“You wait,” Michael said, his form beginning to fade as it had in her previous dream. “You open
yourself to possibility. You allow yourself to believe in what might have been, in what might still be.
And if the moment is right, if the alignment of possibilities permits it, you’ll feel a shift, a transition.
And then you’ll be there, in that other branch, that other life.”
“Will I be able to come back?” Elya asked, reaching for him as he continued to fade. “To this reality,
this life?”
But Michael was gone before he could answer, leaving Elya alone on the bench, the question
hanging in the air between worlds.
She woke with the sun in her eyes, the dream still vivid in her mind. Without giving herself time to
doubt, to rationalize, to talk herself out of what might be madness, she dressed and left her
apartment, walking the six blocks to the small park from her dream.
The bench was there, exactly as she had seen it, positioned beneath a large oak tree whose
branches created a canopy of green above it. Elya sat, feeling both foolish and hopeful, a
combination of emotions that would have been foreign to her before her recent experiences.It was mid-morning, hours away from the twilight Michael had specified. Elya knew she should
leave, should go to work, should return to the routine of her normal life. But something kept her
there, a sense that if she left, she might never find the courage to return, to attempt this crossing
between possibilities.
So she waited, watching as the day progressed around her. Children played on the swings and
slides, their laughter a counterpoint to the deeper concerns that occupied her mind. Office workers
came and went, eating hurried lunches on nearby benches. Elderly couples strolled arm in arm
along the winding paths.
And as the hours passed, as the sun began its descent toward the horizon, Elya became aware of
subtle changes in her surroundings. The colors seemed deeper, more saturated. The sounds more
distinct, each separated from the general ambience like instruments in an orchestra. The air itself
felt different on her skin, charged with potential, with possibility.
Twilight arrived, the sun slipping below the horizon, the sky transitioning from blue to purple to the
deep indigo of approaching night. The park emptied of people, the chill of evening driving them to
the warmth and light of homes and restaurants and bars.
Elya remained on the bench, watching as the first stars appeared, as the streetlights flickered on,
casting pools of yellow light on the paths. She waited for something to happen—for a shift, a
transition, a sign that the boundary between possibilities was thinning, becoming permeable.
Nothing changed. The night deepened. The chill intensified. And still Elya sat, hope gradually giving
way to disappointment, to the recognition that she had been foolish to believe in dreams, in
psychics, in the possibility of crossing between realities.
She was about to leave, to accept that Michael would remain forever a glimpse of what might have
been, when she noticed a figure approaching along the path—a tall, dark-haired man whose walk
she recognized instantly, though she had seen it only in dreams and in that brief glimpse on the
street.
Michael.
He came to stand before her, solid and real in the half-light of the park, no longer a fading
apparition but a man of flesh and blood.
“You came,” he said, his voice exactly as she remembered it from the voicemail, from the phone
call, from her dreams. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I had to know,” Elya said, rising from the bench, her legs stiff from hours of sitting. “I had to
understand who you are, what you are.”Michael nodded, his expression warm despite the gravity of the moment. “I understand. Will you
come with me? I can show you.”
He held out his hand, an invitation, a crossroads. Elya hesitated for just a moment, then placed her
hand in his. His fingers were warm and solid around hers, the grip neither too loose nor too tight—
just right, as if their hands had been designed to fit together.
As they walked through the darkening park, the world around them began to shift subtly. The paths
remained where they were, but the trees seemed to stand taller, their shapes slightly different. The
distant sounds of traffic changed, became less frantic, more melodic somehow. The air itself felt
different in her lungs, richer, more substantive.
They left the park and entered streets that were familiar in layout but different in detail. Buildings
she knew had different facades, different colors. Shops she frequented had different names,
different merchandise displayed in their windows. It was her city, but not her city—a variation
played in a different key.
“This is my reality,” Michael said, guiding her through streets that grew increasingly unfamiliar the
further they walked. “Or rather, our reality—the branch of possibility where we met, where we
chose each other.”
They reached an apartment building that Elya recognized as similar to her own, though the
entrance was different, the color of the door a deep blue rather than green. Michael led her up to
the third floor and unlocked a door, gesturing for her to enter first.
Inside was an apartment that echoed her own in layout but differed in every other way.
Where her furniture was modern and minimal, this space was filled with comfortable,
slightly worn pieces that invited relaxation. Where her walls were mostly bare, these were
covered with paintings and photographs—many showing Elya and Michael together, in
places she had never been, doing things she had never done.
“This is our home,” Michael said, watching her as she moved through the space, touching
objects, examining photographs. “In this branch of possibility, we’ve lived here together for
three years.”
Elya picked up a framed photograph from a side table. It showed the two of them on what
appeared to be a hiking trail, mountains rising behind them, both smiling widely at the camera. “I look happy,” she said, surprised by the depth of emotion the image evoked, the
longing for a joy she had never actually experienced.
“You are happy,” Michael said. “In this reality, in this version of your life. We both are.”
He moved to a bookshelf, taking down a volume—a copy of The Woman Who Collected
Goodbyes. But unlike Elya’s copy, which began in the middle and ended with blank pages,
this one was complete, whole, with a beginning and a proper ending.
“In this reality,” Michael said, handing her the book, “you wrote this. It was published two
years ago to considerable acclaim. It’s being adapted into a film.”
Elya took the book, running her fingers over the cover, which bore her name as author. She
opened it, reading the dedication on the first page: “For Michael, who taught me that
beginnings are as worthy of collection as endings.”
The reality of what was happening began to sink in. This wasn’t just a glimpse of what might
have been; it was an entire life, fully realized, running parallel to her own. A life in which she
had met Michael, had loved him, had written a novel, had achieved a kind of happiness
that had always eluded her in her own reality.
“How is this possible?” she asked, the question directed not just at Michael but at the
universe, at whatever force or principle allowed for such divergent paths, such parallel
existences.
“The multiverse theory,” Michael said, sitting on the couch and gesturing for her to join him.
“The idea that every decision, every choice, creates a new branch of reality. In this branch,
we met at a bookstore—not Leon’s, but a different one—four years ago. You were browsing
in the poetry section. I was looking for a gift for my sister. We reached for the same book at
the same time.”As he spoke, images flickered in Elya’s mind—not memories but something adjacent to
them, like scenes from a film she had watched long ago and mostly forgotten. Herself,
younger, dressed in a blue coat she had actually owned, her hand colliding with a
stranger’s as they both reached for a slim volume of poetry. Looking up, startled, into eyes
that crinkled at the corners when they smiled.
“We went for coffee,” Michael continued. “We talked for hours. I asked for your number.
You hesitated—in every branch of possibility, there’s a moment where you almost walk
away, where your instinct to collect goodbyes almost overcomes your capacity for hellos.
But in this reality, you gave me your number. And three days later, we had dinner. And two
years later, we moved in together. And now, here we are.”
Elya sat beside him, close but not touching, trying to process the enormity of what he was
telling her, of what she was experiencing. This wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. It was too
detailed, too consistent, too real for that. It was a life she might have had, a person she
might have been, had she made one different choice at one specific moment.
“And in my reality?” she asked. “The one I come from? What happened there?”
Michael’s expression grew somber. “In your reality, you didn’t give me your number. You
walked away. We never met again, not properly. I saw you once or twice, from a distance,
but you didn’t see me. Our paths never crossed again.”
“But the voicemail?” Elya asked. “The photographs? How did they appear in my reality if we
never met?”
“The boundaries between possibilities aren’t absolute,” Michael said. “They’re permeable,
especially for someone like you, someone who’s been to Elsewhere. Sometimes things slip
through—artifacts from one reality appearing in another. It happens when the branches
come very close to touching, when a moment in one reality echoes strongly in another.”He took her hand, his touch warm and solid, real in a way that defied the strangeness of
their situation. “The voicemail was from three years ago, in this reality. I was away on a
business trip. I called to tell you I missed you. In your reality, for whatever reason, that
message slipped through the boundary, appeared on your phone as if it had been left years
ago.”
“And the photographs?” Elya asked, thinking of the images that had appeared and then
blanked themselves, as if rejecting the reality they had briefly invaded.
“The same phenomenon,” Michael said. “Artifacts from this reality briefly manifesting in
yours. But they couldn’t maintain their existence there. The divergence between the
branches was too great. So they faded, became blank, returned to possibility rather than
actuality.”
He stood, drawing her up with him, and led her through the apartment to what in her reality
was a spare room, a space filled with boxes she had yet to unpack. In this reality, it was a
studio—easels and canvases, paints and brushes, the air rich with the smell of turpentine
and oils.
“You paint here,” Michael said. “You started a year ago, after your book was published. You
said writing had freed something in you, had reconnected you with parts of yourself you’d
forgotten or set aside.”
Elya moved through the studio, touching brushes, examining canvases that showed
landscapes, abstracts, portraits—all painted with a confidence and skill she couldn’t
imagine possessing. On one easel was a half-finished painting of Michael, his expression
captured with a depth of understanding that spoke of long familiarity, of deep connection.
“I don’t paint,” she said. “I’ve never painted. Not since elementary school.”
“Not in your reality,” Michael corrected gently. “But in this one, you do. And you’re good at
it. You’re having your first exhibition next month.”He led her back to the living room, where photographs on the walls showed a life she had
never lived—holidays she had never taken, friends she had never made, experiences she
had never had. A life fuller, richer, more engaged than the one she knew.
“Why are you showing me this?” Elya asked, emotions warring within her—longing for what
she saw, grief for what she had missed, confusion about what it all meant. “Why bring me
here, to this reality, to see what I could have had but don’t?”
Michael’s expression was complex, combining affection, sadness, and something else,
something harder to name. “Because you have a choice,” he said. “The boundaries are thin
right now, permeable. You could stay here, in this reality. You could have this life, these
experiences, this…” He hesitated. “This love.”
“Stay?” Elya repeated, the word echoing in her mind, expanding to encompass implications
she could barely grasp. “You mean… leave my reality behind? Live here instead?”
Michael nodded. “It’s possible. Rare, but possible. Especially for someone who’s already
crossed between realities once, who’s been to Elsewhere. Your connection to your original
branch of possibility is already loosened, already more flexible than most people’s.”
“But what would happen to… to the Elya who already exists here? The one who wrote the
book, who paints, who has been with you for four years?”
“You would merge,” Michael said. “Become one person, with memories from both
branches. It’s happened before, with others who have crossed between possibilities.
There’s an adjustment period, a time of integration, but eventually the two sets of
memories, the two identities, become a single coherent whole.”
Elya moved to the window, looking out at a city that was her city but not—familiar in its
general outline but different in countless small details. What Michael was offering was
seductive, compelling: a life that seemed fuller, happier, more complete than the one she knew. A life with love at its center, with creativity and connection and all the things she had
begun to reclaim since her journey to Elsewhere.
But it wasn’t her life. Not really. It was a life that another version of her had built, choice by
choice, experience by experience. Did she have the right to step into it, to claim it as her
own? And what of her own reality, her own experiences? Imperfect as they were, they had
shaped her, had made her who she was. Could she really abandon them, leave them
behind like discarded clothes?
“I don’t know,” she said finally, turning back to Michael. “It’s too much. Too sudden. I need
time to think, to understand what this means.”
Michael nodded, his expression gentle with understanding. “Of course,” he said. “But we
don’t have much time. The boundaries will thicken again at dawn. If you want to stay, you
need to decide before then. Otherwise, you’ll be pulled back to your own reality, and it
might be much harder to cross over again.”
He moved to her, taking her hands in his. “I’ll give you space to think,” he said. “I’ll go for a
walk. When I come back, you can tell me what you’ve decided.”
After he left, Elya sat in the apartment that was hers but not hers, surrounded by evidence
of a life she hadn’t lived, trying to make an impossible decision. Stay in this reality, with its
richness and love and creative fulfillment? Or return to her own, to the life she knew,
imperfect but authentically hers?
She thought of what the psychic had warned her: Those who cross between possibilities
sometimes forget which is their original reality. They become lost, drifting between
branches, never fully existing in any of them. Was that a risk she was willing to take? To
potentially lose herself in the space between possibilities, to become a ghost drifting
between worlds?As the night deepened around her, Elya continued to wrestle with the decision, weighing
what she knew against what she might know, what she had experienced against what she
might experience. And beneath it all, a deeper question: Was she the kind of person who
collected goodbyes, or was she the kind who embraced hellos?
4
Michael returned just before dawn, the sky outside lightening from black to deep blue, the
first hint of the coming day. He found Elya where he had left her, sitting on the couch,
surrounded by photographs and mementos from a life she hadn’t lived.
“Have you decided?” he asked, his voice soft with understanding, free of pressure or
expectation.
Elya looked up at him, at this man who was both stranger and intimate, both unknown and
deeply familiar. “I think I have,” she said. “But I have questions first. Things I need to
understand before I can make this choice.”
Michael sat beside her, ready to listen, to answer, to help her navigate this impossible
decision.
“The other Elya,” she began. “The one who belongs here, in this reality. What happens to
her if I don’t stay? If I go back to my own branch of possibility?”
“She continues,” Michael said. “Her life—this life—goes on as it would have. She has no
knowledge of you, of your visit here. To her, this has been just another night, unmarked by
anything unusual.”
“And you?” Elya asked. “Do you exist in my reality? Are you somewhere in my world, living a
life that has never intersected with mine except for that brief moment in the bookstore?Michael’s expression grew thoughtful. “I exist in every branch of possibility where I wasn’t
prevented from being born by other choices, other divergences. So yes, in your reality, I
exist. I live across the city from you. I work as an architect. I’m single. I have a cat named
Dostoevsky.”
The specificity of these details made Elya catch her breath. This wasn’t just a hypothetical
person, a concept, a possibility. This was a man with a life, with habits and preferences
and a cat with a literary name.
“Could I find you there?” she asked. “In my reality? Could we meet, could we have…
something like this?” She gestured around at the apartment, at the evidence of their shared
life in this branch of possibility.
“You could,” Michael said. “But it wouldn’t be the same. We would be meeting for the first
time, as strangers. We would have no shared history, no foundation of experiences. We
might connect, might build something together, but it would be different from what exists
here. Not better or worse, necessarily, just different.”
Elya nodded, absorbing this, turning it over in her mind. Then she asked the question that
had been brewing since she first stepped into this other reality: “Why did you reach out to
me? Why did the voicemail and the photographs cross over to my reality? Was it random,
or was there a purpose?”
Michael was quiet for a long moment, considering. “I don’t think it was random,” he said
finally. “I think… I think there are moments when the branches of possibility reach for each
other, when alternate versions of ourselves seek connection across the boundaries that
separate them. Not consciously, not deliberately, but at some deeper level. Perhaps the
Michael in your reality was thinking of the life he might have had, the connections he might
have made, at the same time that I was missing you during that business trip. Perhaps your
journey to Elsewhere made you more receptive to such crossings, more attuned to the
multiplicity of possibilities.”He took her hand, his touch warm and solid. “Or perhaps it’s simpler than that. Perhaps
some love transcends the boundaries between possibilities. Perhaps some connections
are meant to exist in every branch of reality, in every version of our lives.”
Elya looked down at their joined hands, at the physical connection that bridged not just the
space between two people but the gap between two entire realities. It would be so easy to
stay, to slip into this life that seemed richer, fuller, more vibrant than her own. To accept
the love and creativity and connection that existed here.
But as she considered it, she realized that what she was seeing wasn’t a better life, merely
a different one. The Elya of this reality had made different choices, had followed different
paths, but she wasn’t more authentic or more complete than the Elya who had journeyed
to Elsewhere, who had reclaimed the parts of herself she had abandoned.
And there was something presumptuous, something almost selfish, about the idea of
stepping into this life, of claiming as her own what another version of herself had built
through her own choices and efforts. It would be a kind of theft, a borrowing of happiness
rather than the creation of it.
“I can’t stay,” she said finally, looking up to meet Michael’s eyes. “This isn’t my life. It’s
beautiful, and I’m grateful to have seen it, to know that such possibilities exist. But I need
to return to my own reality, to the life I’ve made, however imperfect it might be.”
She expected disappointment in his expression, perhaps even hurt. Instead, she saw
understanding, even a hint of pride.
“I think that’s the right choice,” he said. “Not because I wouldn’t want you to stay—I
would—but because you’re right. This isn’t your life. It’s hers. And you have your own to
live, your own possibilities to explore.”
He stood, drawing her up with him, and led her to the door of the apartment. Outside, the
sky was lightening further, the blue deepening as dawn approached.”There’s not much time,” Michael said. “The boundaries will thicken soon. You need to
return to where you crossed over—the bench in the park—before the sun rises
completely.”
Elya nodded, a lump forming in her throat. This was goodbye, again. Another farewell to
add to her collection. But this one felt different, not an ending but a recognition of parallel
paths, of lives that touched but did not merge.
“Before I go,” she said, “I want to know something. The book—The Woman Who Collected
Goodbyes. How does it end? In this reality, where it’s complete, what’s the conclusion?”
Michael smiled, a warm expression that crinkled the corners of his eyes in exactly the way
she remembered from the photographs. “The woman realizes that she’s been collecting
the wrong thing all along,” he said. “Not goodbyes but hellos that never happened,
beginnings that never began. She stops collecting and starts creating, stops cataloging
endings and starts initiating beginnings. The last line is: ‘And she understood at last that
every goodbye was also a hello to whatever came next, that endings were merely
beginnings in disguise.'”
Elya nodded, the words resonating with her own journey, her own realizations. “Thank you,”
she said. “Not just for telling me that, but for… for showing me this. For letting me see what
might have been.”
“You’re welcome,” Michael said. “And if you ever find yourself in a bookstore, reaching for a
book of poetry, and your hand collides with a stranger’s… maybe don’t walk away this
time.”
Elya laughed, a sound that surprised her with its genuine mirth. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They embraced, a brief but intense connection, and then Elya turned and walked away,
down the stairs and out into the pre-dawn city, making her way back to the park, to the
bench where the boundaries between possibilities were thin enough to cross.As she walked, she thought about what she was returning to—a life that had seemed
empty before her journey to Elsewhere but which now felt full of potential, of possibilities
waiting to be realized. She thought about the other Elya, the one whose life she had
glimpsed, and hoped that she appreciated what she had, the richness she had created
through her choices and her courage.
And she thought about Michael—not just the one she was leaving behind in this branch of
possibility, but the one who existed in her own reality. The architect with the cat named
Dostoevsky. The man she might seek out when she returned, not as a replacement for
what she had glimpsed here but as a new beginning, a hello rather than a goodbye.
She reached the park just as the first rays of the sun crested the horizon, touching the
bench with golden light. Sitting down, Elya closed her eyes and opened herself to the
transition, to the return journey between possibilities.
She felt it as a subtle shift, a realignment, like a chiropractic adjustment to reality itself.
When she opened her eyes, she was still in the park, still on the bench, but the quality of
the light was different, the arrangement of trees and paths subtly altered. She was back in
her own branch of possibility, her own reality.
Rising, she began the walk back to her apartment, to the life she had chosen to reclaim
rather than abandon. As she walked, she noticed details of her city with new
appreciation—the way the morning light caught the edges of buildings, the varied faces of
people beginning their days, the small moments of connection and beauty that she had
often overlooked in her preoccupation with endings and departures.
When she reached her apartment, Elya went straight to the box where she had found the
photographs, the ones that had appeared and then blanked themselves. They were still
there, still empty of images. But as she held them, she no longer felt a sense of mystery or
loss. Instead, she felt a kind of peace, an acceptance of the multiplicity of possibilities, of
the lives she might have lived and the ones she still might live.She placed the photographs back in the box and closed it, not disposing of them but no
longer needing them as evidence or confirmation. What she had experienced was real, in
its way, but it was not her reality, not her life. That was still to be created, choice by choice,
moment by moment.
Opening her laptop, Elya began to write. Not the novel that existed in that other branch of
possibility—that was not her story to tell—but a new one, one that drew on her experiences
with the independent reflection, with the town called Elsewhere, with the glimpse of a life
she might have lived. A story about possibilities and choices, about the fluidity of identity
and the multiplicity of realities.
As she wrote, Elya found herself remembering the dedication in the other Elya’s book: “For
Michael, who taught me that beginnings are as worthy of collection as endings.” She
smiled at the thought, recognizing its truth, its resonance with her own journey.
Perhaps she would seek out the Michael of her reality, the architect with the literary cat.
Perhaps they would connect, would build something together—not a replica of what she
had glimpsed in that other branch of possibility, but something uniquely their own, shaped
by their specific choices and experiences.
Or perhaps she would forge a different path entirely, one that neither she nor any version of
herself had yet explored. The possibilities were endless, branching out before her like the
limbs of a vast tree, each representing a life she might live, a person she might become.
The thought was no longer frightening but exhilarating. For the first time in her life, Elya
found herself looking forward rather than back, anticipating beginnings rather than
collecting endings. She was no longer the woman who collected goodbyes but the woman
who embraced hellos, who understood that every ending was also a beginning, and that
both were equally worthy of attention, of celebration, of collection.