It was the day before the day of my wedding to Esme. I had a Zoom call booked to my oncologist for 11 am. I waited at my computer, but Dr Zeiss did not appear. By 11.15, I was beginning to think it would be a no-show, but I decided to wait longer. Then something strange happened. As well as seeing my own face in one of the Zoom windows, I saw my face appear in another window. Oh, just a technology glitch, I thought. Then something stranger. When I moved my hand to scratch my head, only one of the copies of my face echoed this movement.Then I heard my own voice say, "Don't do it!" I was so taken aback, I did not even think about what was being referred to. Instead of asking, "Not do what?", I asked "What is this?".
"Don't marry her!" He was emphatic.
"Are you crazy? She is gorgeous! I won't find another woman like that who would have me."
"She is not gorgeous."
"How do you know?"
"Because I am you four years later."
He let that sink in, which it didn't. He added, "I should know, I married her."
"How can I trust you?"
"Would I lie to you, lie to myself?"
"People do strange things."
"Believe me, you are making a huge mistake."
"I don't believe you. I've known Esme for six months. We have gone on a trip together. I know her."
"What you don't know is that she has a personality disorder."
"I don't believe that. She is perfectly normal."
"I can tell you what stocks will sky-rocket in the next few years."
"You can't buy me, you should know that."
"Ah yes, I was a lot more idealistic four years ago."
"Besides, what's in it for you?"
"If you don't marry her then I will be far better off, in more ways than you can figure, including financially."
"Why should I care about your welfare?"
"Because I am you, or rather, you will be me."
"I don't believe that. I think you are some sort of fake. For a start, time travel to the past is impossible".
"This is not time travel. It's a virtual communication using a special channel."
"That's gobbledygook."
"You don't..."
At this point, the face was gone. Although I did not believe him, our conversation had shaken me up. It planted a seed of doubt in my mind.
Naturally, I did not follow the advice of my putative future self. Our wedding was small but festive, with flamenco music and copious sangria. Then a honeymoon in Maui, which was more than pleasant, like a honeymoon should be. Lots of sex, some luxury relaxation, with exotic landscapes. We had a few arguments, mainly due to misunderstandings and mistaken expectations of each other. Nothing major though.
My mysterious doppelganger did not re-appear, though I used Zoom a number of times. Dr Zeiss seemed to be jetting about every month, so my cancer status remained indeterminate. He kept requesting more tests. Esme and I now lived in a top-floor apartment in Drummoyne. We planned a European trip, which nearly didn't happen because of a cancer scare, but we visited Spain and Hungary.
Two months later, during yet another Zoom call, the same thing happened. After the call finished, as I was sitting in front of the laptop, I saw myself in one of the screens. This time, my image wore the jumper I had on during the previous call, not the one I was presently wearing. Otherwise, it looked just like me. "She's having an affair. Did you know that?" I was taken aback. "Do you know with whom?" He waited for me to say something, but I remained silent. "Her lover is your good friend, Vincent." "I don't believe that" I replied, feeling confident. "Your not believing won't change the reality." It was true that Esme and Vincent liked each other and shared a similar sense of humour, but I never saw them flirting.
"What's your evidence?" I challenged my image. "You know that Vincent separated recently from his wife?" "Sure, so what?" "Keep watch and you will soon..." At this point, my phantom self was cut off by the Zoom window closing.
Again, I did not trust my double, but I did watch Esme's movements more closely. Once a suspicion is planted in the mind, it is very hard to discard it. Despite myself, I was looking at my sweet wife with a different eye, and hating myself for it. Of course, I did not say anything to her. I forced myself NOT to check up on her. Thus I didn't ring her hairdresser on some pretext to check she was actually there. Trust was fundamental for me in a relationship, so the absolute last thing I wanted was to distrust Esme. Not for a moment did I want to be a jealous husband, like the Moor of Venice.
Nothing, but nothing, in Esme's behaviour was suspicious. She was as loving as before, even though, with hindsight I realised that the two of us were now making our way through that tricky transition from being in love to loving. The headlong passion of the in-love state was giving way to affection and caring. I endeavoured to eradicate the suspicion from my brain. I was not entirely successful. It was rather like the time I had been scratched by a monkey in Bali. There had been a chance that I had been infected with rabies, but as the years passed, this background worry receded, till eventually it was gone. Rabies has a use-by date. I thought the same would happen with the insinuations of my phantom self.
About a month later, I was caught unprepared by a call on my mobile. My own voice, the number "unknown". "I know more about you than you realise," my own voice, or an excellent copy thereof, intoned darkly. "I know more than you know." I did not reply, feeling a vague dread about what he would throw up this time. "She wants to leave you. You know that, don't you? You just won't admit it to yourself." This was definitely untrue, giving me some relief. I terminated the call with a flippant, "Don't call us, we'll call you!"
I needed help. Not psychiatric help, but the technical kind. I was lucky in that my long-standing friend, Alex, was a PC guru. I turned to him for assistance. He scanned the logs in the system directory of my laptop and managed to locate the second Zoom call. "I'll take this log home and analyse it thoroughly," he told me. "I like sleuthing like this, as it is a challenge. But you will owe me a cappuccino." I thanked Alex, relieved that I was taking a positive step to clarify things.
Four days later, Alex rang me on Whatsapp. At least, I thought it was him. By this point, I distrusted whatever appeared on any of my screens. Better that than distrusting Esme! Without preamble, he answered my unspoken question. "Zeirin, I managed to discover the origin of the intrusion into your Zoom session. I know the IP address." "Can you trace this to a particular computer?" "I think so, but give me a few more days." He rang off, not being one to chit-chat.
That week, I was all expectation, unproductive at work and hardly able to think about anything else but the enquiry we were pursuing. Then an excited Alex appeared on my Zoom screen. "I know the address, I mean the physical street address of the hacker." He was obviously proud of himself. "Do you want to know?" he asked teasingly. "Well, tell me already!" I answered rapidly. "It's 47 Nock St, Ultimo." "Wow!" I exclaimed. "You know this address?" "Don't I ever! I lived there for almost a year." "Tell me", he prompted. "My ex still lives there, licking her wounds."
"So it looks like she used AI to generate your voice and animated image in order to try to destroy your marriage."
"Yup! That's it. She was extremely cut by our break-up, which was due to her being completely untrustworthy. She is razor smart and a computer whiz. I could never do something like this, but I can see her being able to pull it off."
I experienced a feeling like that of a long-resident pressure being removed from my abdomen.
That promised to be the end of the matter, except that a year later, when the next incursion happened, it did not come from Ultimo, or anywhere else on the planet, as per Alex. The content was also entirely different. Only my face and voice were the same as before. Or were they? I seemed to notice a difference, but could not specify what it was.
"You look just like me," my double said. "So do you", I answered by way of greeting, feeling blasé about this sort of encounter. "Who the hell are you?" he asked, puzzled. It was interesting that this time my double seemed to be more
mystified than me, sounding as though he thought I had set up the encounter. Or maybe it was an act? For me, it was deja vu. Yet for some reason I was certain it was not the doing of EE, alias my Evil Ex. "Who are you?" he repeated.
"I am Zeirin Granger, but I suspect you might use the same name."
"No, my name is Zeirin Grange", he responded.
"That is pretty close, isn't it?"
"Yes. Where are you?"
"Sydney."
"So am I. Whereabouts?"
"Woodsville".
"Me too, but it is Woods Villa, not Woodsville".
"I'm sure there is no Woods Villa in Sydney".
"I am sure that there is."
"One of us is wrong. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Maybe I've been reading too much science fiction. What if we are in different worlds?!" I suggested.
"That is very far-fetched."
"I've never been an aficionado of the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but now..."
"Even if there are many worlds, they cannot interact."
"Unless there is some singularity or flaw in space-time that allows information to leak through."
"What is the date where you are?" he asked.
"12th September 2028. Yours?"
"6 November 3001."
"Way out! How old are you?"
"Forty".
"I'm all of forty-one, and counting."
"What is your dating system based on, I mean what happened in year one?"
"That was the year in which..."
Here the connection between our two worlds, mediated by Zoom, was broken because my laptop rebooted.
I was intensely curious about this alternative world in which I was called Grange instead of Granger. However, there was no way I could re-establish the connection. I used Zoom often, but for a long time nothing untoward happened. Then it did.
"Hi again", he greeted me like an old friend, which in a way I was.
I barely returned his greeting before launching into a prepared speech. I blurted it out rapidly, fearing the connection would be broken at any moment.
"I have pancreatic cancer, inoperable but slowly progressing. Can you check for me whether there is a cure in your world?"
"Sure", he replied. I have a question for you as well. It's about..." Here the screen went black.
The days slipped by, with my anxiety mounting. My prognosis was eight months. I believed our connection depended on the ether wind blowing through the singularity that allowed our two worlds to briefly communicate. I visualised the wind blowing in the right direction, but of course, there was nothing I could do but wait. I dared not tell Esme about this long shot chance, for fear it would make it fall through. It felt so fragile. I clutched the hope tightly to my chest. My life was good and I was not ready to die.
Then Eureka! His face appeared. He got straight to the point.
"Take 20 ml of methylene blue, starting with 1 ml per day. Your pee will turn bright blue, but it fixes pancreatic cancer for 84% of patients."
"Thanks a million!!"
"I have a question too. I have begun dating two attractive ladies, Jessica and Yulia. One is a tall blonde, the other a short brunette. Any tips for me?"
"The names are different, but I am happily married to Esme. She is tall, blonde, small bust but good legs. A radiologist of Hungarian descent. My ex is a computer genius with a side-line in cyber crime. She probably has links to one of the Russian mafias. She lured me with great blowjobs."
"Sounds terrific!"
"No, she is poison!"
"The descriptions match, pretty much. I'll investigate further, but thanks for your input."
"Good luck!" I managed to say, before the ether wind turned once more.