And Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock

The first words out of his mouth were, "Well, I nailed that scrumptious little piece of ass last night." I knew it was coming and I was braced for it. Nevertheless, that straightforward declaration of conquest almost made me dead in TWO universes... "Calm yourself boy!!"

I raised an eyebrow and said, trying to disguise how much the douchebag's success with my wife had rocked me, "And I should care about that, why??!"

He said, "She was one of the hottest little minxes I've ever had the pleasure of railing. But the weird thing was that once she got into it, she started calling me Erik." Asswipe had a mocking grin as he added, "I'd be hurt if she was anything but a convenient hole."

That little bit of insight was rattling around in my skull like a 22-caliber slug... when he laughed, like it was the most improbable thing in the world and chortled "Hey!! isn't that YOUR name? Man! What a coincidence!" I thought, "Asshole!!"

Then he added, "But the moment we were done she got all hysterical. I'd planned to fuck her all night. But she wouldn't stop crying. It was like she felt guilty about messing around on this Erik chap."

I saw the realization hit him, "You don't suppose she's married, do you? I didn't see a ring. But some of the ladies hide it to get the full Todd Blankenship experience." He preened like a fucking peacock.

I said sounding annoyed, "How the fuck would I know!! I'm just the taxi driver and I only met the woman yesterday."

How would you react??! The man had driven a stake through my heart. And yet, Cat was obviously still mourning my death... just as I had hers. So, the little voice in my head was prancing around yelling, "She still loves me."

Dickhead paused and muttered perplexed, "Man... I gotta tell ya, that little lady is major league nut case. She may be the best-looking broad in this entire complex, maybe even the whole State of Tennessee. But she's all yours. I'm done with her."

I thought, "What a condescending prick!!"

Let me assure you folks... I'm not the weenie that the situation was making me out to be. It's just that interdimensional travel is disorienting. Hah!! I'll bet nobody else ever said THAT!! There are too many ways you can misstep and that makes you hesitant.

Even so, listening to this douchebag brag about fucking my wife -- or whatever you would call the person who was an intimate part of your soul - but who you'd never actually met -- finally put my ass in gear. I'd played Hamlet waaaaay too long. Now, I was resolved to stop acting like a world class pussy, and just get on with the business!! I said with heat in my voice, "Where is she staying."

He raised one eyebrow and peered at me skeptically. Then he laughed, "Really??! You won't stand a chance with a woman like her."

I said through gritted teeth, "I appreciate your advice, now WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE LIVING!"

He got the message. The douchebag was seven inches shorter than me and fifty pounds lighter. And he could see in my eyes that he was about to get himself sewn into a burlap bag and dropped from 10,000 feet.

He said placatingly, "Easy man... if you want to get yourself shot down by that hot little bitch... then feel free. She's living in her own prefab house over by Y-12. She's into some kind of top-secret monkey business over there."

The historians in my dimension had exhaustively documented what happened at Oak Ridge. So, I knew everything about Y-12. It was the Electromagnetic Separation Plant that produced the enriched uranium that was used in the two bombs we dropped over Japan. It was a couple of miles down the valley.

As I rode my faithful Scout over to the Y-12 site, I was trying to think of the best way to approach Cat. It was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day in Eastern Tennessee. You could see why the people who live there consider it God's Country.

The confounding problem was how to introduce myself to my own spouse. At least - without totally freaking her out. People don't just come back from the dead -- I can think of only one instance of that and I wasn't planning on starting up a new religion. So, I couldn't just bang on Cat's door and ask her out on a date.

The Scout's kickstand was broken. I was in the process of leaning the bike against a tree when Cat solved my problem. She appeared, walking aimlessly up Scarboro road headed toward a little green hill across from the big, blockish Y-12 building.

I restrained my eagerness to just plunge into the woods right behind her. Instead, I followed along stealthily on a parallel trail. She was wearing a pale-yellow sundress that stood out among all of the greenery. It made her easy to track.

A mockingbird was singing in the trees as Cat approached a little rocky outcropping at the top of the hill. She sat down, gracefully tucked her legs under her, and just gazed out over the green Tennessee countryside. It was quiet and peaceful and she had obviously come up there to think.

It was a touching little scene. I knew exactly what she was experiencing and why, because I had done the exact same thing sitting on my little bench next to her grave. Now, my long-lost wife was right in front of me, gorgeous and alive and I was fifteen feet away, standing behind a big old oak tree.

My heart was hammering as I said gently, "Please don't turn around." Of course, she gasped in fright and turned around. The gods deducted style points from my scorecard.

Cat couldn't see me because of the tree. So, I said, keeping my voice low and loving, "I'm sorry I startled you, and I promise I won't hurt you." Then I added fervently, with all the love in my heart, "But I have to stay hidden while I tell you something." I was hoping that she'd recognize my voice.

Cat scrambled to her feet obviously frightened. But she also looked intrigued. I said soothingly, "I am going to step out from behind this tree now, and I want you to take as much time as you need to process this. But I can assure you that what you see is real and that I love you."

She said, voice quavering, "Who are you!? Don't hurt me!"

I said, "I would never hurt you. I have loved you from the moment we met in that fraternity mixer all those many years ago," and I stepped from behind the tree.

She took a second just staring astonished, eyes wide with fear. Then, these beautiful blue orbs slowly rolled up into her head and she fainted dead away. She came-to lying on the ground with her head in my lap and me stroking her forehead. Her intelligent blue eyes opened, she saw my face and she let out a sob of recognition. I said, "It's me Pix."

My wife was indeed a gorgeous little pixie and that was my special name for her. I was the only one who ever used it. It was my way of telling her it was really me. Cat may be small and compact but she was anything but frail. Her powerful mind took control and she said wonderingly, "Is it really you Erik?"

I nodded. She lunged up, threw her arms around my neck, buried her face in my chest and burst into tears. A period ensued when the two of us just hugged and cried. Tell me... What would YOU do?? I had endured the exquisitely painful knowledge that I would never see her again. And she had suffered the same heartaching realization. The emotion had to go someplace.

Now we hugged as if our grip on each other was the only thing keeping us from spinning off the face of the planet. She said through her tears, "How are you here?"

I said gently, as I continued to stroke her golden hair, "It's an incredible story and we need time for me to tell it. But let's just say that the two of us had to conquer death in order to reunite."

She sniffled for a while longer. Then she reared her head back and said, "What do you mean, death? In fact, how are you alive? I was told you were killed in a boating accident. It was so bad that it was a closed casket. I was at your funeral!!"

I said, "You are going to have to suspend a lot of disbelief when you hear this story and I'm not exactly certain how it happened, myself. Is there someplace private where we can talk this out together?"

Housing at Oak Ridge ranged from hut-like accommodations that the African-American workers were segregated into -- yes, segregation was still alive and well in that dimension -- all the way up to tidy little houses for the scientists like Cat.

My wife's house was located a short walk from the Y-12 facility, with its busy calutron racetracks pumping out the ingredients for nuclear holocaust. All of this was dumped into a bucolic setting of dusty roads, green fields, and ridges. You almost expected people to be sitting on the porches playing banjos.

Cat's house was one of those prefabricated buildings, which had sprung up like mushrooms in a damp cave. The whole area had an alien and hostile feel to it, with its little homes surrounding a massive square building, ensconced in a sea of fencing and barriers.

We didn't say a word as we walked, side by side, down the hill. It reminded me of our first walk in another time and another dimension. Cat's twenty-by-twenty-four plywood house had one bedroom. It was scrupulously neat and tidy, just like Cat herself. There was a combination sitting and dining room with a kitchen attached. The bathroom completed the square.

There were two chairs and a reading lamp in the sitting room. Cat gestured to one chair and she said, "Coffee?" I figured that my wife needed more time to process this. So, I said, "Sure."

Cat pottered around in the kitchen area for a couple of minutes while I watched, just appraising her. This version was not the wife and mother that she'd been in my dimension. This woman was a seasoned professional. Nevertheless, she'd gotten more beautiful in her thirties. Her body was fuller and she had let her hair grow out into a wheaten sheaf, like a shining golden mane.

It had been almost eight long dreadful years since I had last seem her. And the certainty that I would never see her again had been pure agony. From what I could tell, it had only been about three years since my death in this dimension. But still, I could tell that Cat's pain had been no less intense.

Just to make conversation I said, "How did you end up working for Einstein?" She turned around astonished and concerned and said, "How do you know who he is? The government has kept him under wraps. This is supposed to be a top-secret mission."

I said, "I know a lot of things. For instance, I know that this is the Manhattan Project. It is making the ingredients for the atomic bombs that will end the war, and that Einstein, who is already famous for his Theory of Relativity is part of the brain trust, along with Oppenheimer and Szilard." Cat almost dropped the coffee pot.

She said, truly upset, "How do you know all of that!! Are you a German spy???"

I laughed and said, "I am NOT a German spy and the reason why I know all those things is part of the explanation of how I am here."

Cat brought two steaming mugs into to the sitting room, handed me mine, and sat in the other chair, looking simultaneously loving and worried. I took a second to revel in my wife's contrasts -- beautiful, humble, energetic, loving, brilliant, and presently very anxious.

I started with, "When you and Einstein were on the plane..." She interrupted, like I'd just confirmed an impression, "You were the PILOT!! I had this weird sense that you were with me but my mind kept telling me that was ridiculous because you were dead."

I said, "Well... yes, and no -- remember the part about the parallel universes that you and Einstein were discussing."

She said, eagerly, "Yes, it's the most recent theory of the cosmology. Einstein and de Sitter predicted the phenomenon based on his revised theory of relativity. I worked with both of them on the density-expansion equations, under Hubble's constant."

I said affectionately, "Whatever you just said." Then I added cautiously, gauging her reaction, "I'm living proof that Einstein is correct." I could see that confused her.

She said, puzzled, "What do you mean correct?"

Okay -- this was the point where you have to roll the dice. I muttered a little prayer and said, "He's right about the parallel universes because I'm not from this one." Her lovely face got a look of utter incomprehension.

I said, "I might as well spit it out. I don't know about any density-expansion equations. But I'm telling you that I am indeed dead in this universe, just like you think I am. Furthermore, I am absolutely certain that you and our little daughter are very dead in the place that I came from." Cat gave me continued and total bewilderment.

Okay, all-in now... I took a deep breath and said, "We met and married in college and we had a very loving life together. It was an ideal existence until you and our daughter were killed in a traffic accident. It was just one of those things -- something that you endure but can't change. I never stopped grieving."

Cat started to look like I was getting through to her. She said gently, "That was what happened to me when you were killed. I've been crying ever since your funeral."

I nodded sympathetically, then added, "I was certain that I would never see you again. I accepted that as a fact, no matter how painful it was. I tried to soldier on, to make something out of my life, and was successful in my career. And yet, losing you was a black hole in the middle of my soul eating it from the inside out."

She said, tears in her eyes, "I felt exactly the same way. I'm one of Einstein's research fellows. But there is no love in my life. I'm just trying to cope as best I can." I gave her a sympathetic nod. We were fellow travelers in that respect.

I said, "Then, on a very average day I was commuting between the Bahamas and Fort Lauderdale and I flew into something weird. When I came out the other side... I found myself in a world where I was dead and you were alive and apparently our daughter was never born."

Cat gasped. Her look of sorrow said it all. She murmured sadly, "It must have been different in your dimension. We tried... God knows we tried. It was one of the reasons I felt justified in separating."

I said testily, "We'll get to the irrelevant stuff in a minute. The important thing that you need to know is that, in my dimension the war, which is still going on here, ended in 1945."

She looked flabbergasted. She said, "How??"

I said, "Simple enough... Roosevelt was President, not Lindbergh, and he understood the geopolitical situation. The rest is history, so to speak."

Then I added cautiously, "But what you're doing at this place ended it. At least that's what happened in my dimension. Apparently, history in these dimensions differs based on variables that produce different outcomes."

She said earnestly, "Naturally... logically, the occupants are the same in each dimension. But what happens to them is the sum of the choices that they, and other people, make. So, Germany is in Canada in my reality, and we are preparing a solution to that problem." I thought fondly, "Ever the nerd."

I said, "So, my presence with you is a lucky paradox. We are both dead in each other's worlds. But we are together here and frankly I don't intend to lose you again under any circumstances. Then I paused and added significantly, or at least I'll be going with you this time."

Cat got a look of horror on her exquisite face. She said, distressed, "You can't!! It's too dangerous."

I had no fucking idea what she was talking about. I said adamantly, "I have no happiness without you. So, if you die, then I'll be dying with you."

She said, agitated, "I'm the one they picked and I'm the one who agreed to do it. But this is a one-way trip. I am not going to get you killed along with me. In fact, I don't even know how you know about it. Did this happen in your dimension too?"

HUH??!! We were clearly talking about two different things. I was telling her that I couldn't live without her. She thought I was volunteering to go on some kind of suicide mission with her.

I said, "Wait-wait-wait... What are you talking about? Are you telling he that you are getting ready to do something potentially fatal?"

My wife was as emotional as I'd ever seen her. Normally Cat is a cool customer. It's what you get with a woman with her type of intelligence. But she was utterly distraught. Maybe that's why she simply blurted it out, "The Nazis have a nuclear capability and they are going to use it. I'm the one who has been chosen to stop them." I was pretty sure that she wasn't supposed to tell me that.

I just stood there, mouth hanging open. FUCK ME!!! I knew that Cat was a patriot. Because wealthy and extremely hot college coeds don't usually spend their free time hanging around with the ROTC nerds. But what was this??!!

I said, "Let me get this straight. The Nazis have The Bomb and you've volunteered for some kind of one-way mission to destroy it??!!"

Her face was grim as she said, "Werner Heisenberg..."

Hell!! I knew that guy. He was the Nazi's version of Oppenheimer, the father of our A-bomb. Heisenberg actually had a head start in 1939. But he never got the support he needed to even get close to making a bomb in my world. That must be one of those choice-based variations.

Cat was still talking, "...has built four bombs in a facility on Lac Koch, on René-Levasseur Island behind the Saguenay line."

I looked puzzled and she added by way of explanation, "That's the line of fortifications in Quebec where Omar Bradly has held the Germans for the past couple of years. We can't let the Nazis use one of them on our defenses there. We have a half-million men in those lines. It will obliterate everything."

I said, "Oh my Lord!! The Manhattan Project only developed two bombs and those ended World War Two in a couple of weeks. I can't imagine what four would do."

Cat said intently, "That's right. But nuclear devices are triggered by a complicated fission reaction, which I am expert in. So, I am going to get into their facility and make sure that the U235 triggers and the equipment that was used to manufacture them are destroyed. It will set the Nazis back far enough that we'll have our own nuclear capability before they recover.

She got a look of satisfaction and said, "THEN the shoe will be on the other foot."

I said with skepticism in my voice, "And just how are you going to get there? Are they dropping you into that place like the airborne units did during the invasion of Normandy?" She got a look of mystification and I thought, "Oops... wrong universe."

She said, "I don't know what Normandy has to do with that. It's in France, not Quebec. But the Germans have air superiority with their jet fighters. So, an airborne invasion is out of the question. Our team is going to be delivered by submarine to Sept-Isles and work our way north to Rene Levasseur."

I said, "And I bet you have a map where the whole route is plotted."

Of course, she had - if my wife is anything she's well organized. I like to fish and hunt and I'd flown over that same territory-- at least in my dimension. I knew that it would be a 120-mile trek through a trackless wilderness comprising nothing but forested hills, lakes, and rivers. Excellent terrain if you are bear black hunting, but demanding and exhausting if you are on a mission to blow up Nazi hardware.

It was nearly 300 miles behind the German lines, which were on the Saguenay. So, there probably wouldn't be any military presence. But there were so many rivers and swamps between the landing spot at Sept Isles and Renee Levasseur that getting there would be almost impossible. Even if Cat and her friends weren't lugging a bunch of high explosives.

My guess was that those guys wouldn't even make it to their objective, let alone successfully infiltrate a high security compound full of SS guards. I said, with contempt in my voice, "Who dreamed up this stupid plan?"