The Strange Adventures of Margery Jones

Chapter X: An Introduction

Margery Jones is just an average woman. Average in every way, except one: she has the ability to visit parallel universes.

Some people believe that there is not just one universe, but trillions upon trillions. Every time we make a decision, the universes splinter off.

Say you’re making toast, and you have to decide between peanut butter or jam. You choose jam, and instantly, another universe springs into being where you picked peanut butter.

So what would you do if you could see the outcome of every decision you ever made? Would you stay in your own universe, or would you visit another world to investigate whether your life turned out differently?

Is the grass always greener?

Chapter 1: I’ve Become a Paradox

Reality is a many-branched tree, and for some reason, I can jump from leaf to leaf. Lucky me.

Would it be better to know more about physics, or less?

It’s probably better if I stop trying to wrap my head around how this gift is possible.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a doctor, a movie star, a writer. I never once said, I want to be a paradox of quantum physics.

Is it healthy for me to pick my old life apart like this, to re-visit every major decision I once made?

Probably not. And yet…

Chapter 2: First Blood

I watched myself die today.

I traveled to a brand new world; but the town was eerily the same. I sat in a park near my apartment, watching the Me-That-Was-Not-Me cross the street to the market.

Returning home with a gallon of skim milk in her hand, a car ran her down. Her purchase mingled with her blood, and the streets ran a sticky pink.

I ran to her. I held her hands while her eyes fixed on me, then fluttered, then fled.

I wanted to put coins on her lids, but I ran instead. And then, I was gone.

Chapter 3: Shadowboxing

I’m not the only version of myself who’s on the move. With infinite worlds to explore, I can’t be the only Margery Jones who feels compelled to see them all.

I’ve seen whispers in the eyes of the other Margeries lately, as if my visitations weren’t completely unexpected. I’m not the first doppelganger they’ve encountered.

There’s a dark coil in me that wants to kill these interlopers, that just assumes any other version of me that has chosen this path is competition, is evil, is a threat.

It’s unnerving.

Some days, I think I’m losing pieces of myself with every trip.

Chapter 4: Sugar and Smoke

I found her beating her head against a wall. Her eyes were like butane, her skin aflame. It’s my own damn fault for believing, she said.

The deck was decorated with white streamers and tiny pink Chinese lanterns.

The sky was raisin-dark; a sugar dusting of stars was over our heads. My stomach growled.

Why am I thinking of food at a time like this?, I thought, angry with myself.

I turned away from her, and saw a wedding cake on fire. Waves of caramelized sugar scented the sky as the flames licked the air, sweet dreams going up in smoke.

Chapter 5: Causality

I can’t always determine the point of divergence when I first arrive.

Even when I have a purpose in making the journey, a hypothesis to test or a person I want to see, I have been known to miss the mark.

Sometimes, the decision that splintered my timeline from theirs is obvious. The car in my driveway is different, or I’ve gotten that boob job I briefly considered when I was twenty.

Other times, I stay for days on end, speaking to no one, and leave completely clueless.

I’ve been traveling for six months, and I still don’t understand this.

Chapter 6: Mercy and Regret

I made a choice, years ago, to take treatment. It made a difference. The proof is here in front of me.

The Margery Jones across the table weighs 500 pounds.

She’s been alone ever since our parents died. No boyfriends. No cats, even. Just a steady stream of TV and grocery deliveries.

I’m so unhappy, she sobs into the tablecloth. Please, won’t you just make it stop?

I cradle her head in my hands. Eye to eye now, and I’m crying, too.

I snap her neck, and immediately wish I could take it all back. I just wanted to ease her pain.

Chapter 7: Putting Away Childish Things

We make a pillow fort in the living room, pink sheets strung over striped sofa cushions.

It’s just like when we were kids, except we’re sharing a bottle of wine, and she insists on smoking unfiltered cigarettes the whole time. She is nice enough to make a vent between layers of linens to let the smoke get out, but my eyes still sting.

It’s strange to share the building of the fort, something we have both done a thousand times while alone, but never with a sort-of-twin.

We have a strange telepathy, we two full-grown women hiding from the monsters.

Chapter 8: Tabula Rasa

I will open the art classroom door, and the smell of chalk and oil paints will bring me to my knees.

There will be echoes of our old classmates, splatters of paint forming stark reminders of the day we learned to fear lead and our fellow students. The pockmarks will still be visible in the walls, even though they’re filled with spackle.

And then, I will hear your voice behind me, whispering something about 7th period French.

I’ll turn around, expectant. The only trace of you will be a breeze ruffling against the clumsy pictures stapled to the corridor walls.

Chapter 9: In Which We Build Our Dreams Accordingly

I didn’t decide to embark on this trip lightly. I didn’t set out to revisit old mistakes. I was driven by a jealous curiosity. If there were other Margeries out there, I was sure that they were the ones having all the fun.

It’s the same reason I could never wrap my head around that damn cat. I’m too curious for my own good. I’m not content with the not-knowing.

I always thought I’d just pop the top off the box and see for myself.

The cat is dead, folks. It has to be.

Maybe that means I’m dead, too.

Chapter 10: Footing is Solid on the Brink

I put on a pair of oversized sunglasses and walk into the diner. I take the last booth so I can have the wall at my back and keep an eye on the door.

There’s a fat fly buzzing against the plate glass window. I close my eyes and whisper, I know how you feel, buddy.

I order black coffee and a slice of pie. The waitress returns with Ovaltine, toast, and two eggs over easy. Is she picking a fight or just half-asleep?

Doesn’t matter. It’s go time.

A new Margery walks in. She’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Chapter 11: Rules of Engagement

I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started out. Arguably, I know less now than I did before.

I have cobbled together these facts:

1. I can’t travel across time, only space. All the other Margeries are my age.

2. I can only tread where there is another living Margery to anchor me. If she dies, I get booted to the next sphere.

3. The point of divergence isn’t common knowledge. There’s no way of knowing without asking or deducing.

4. I can begin the trek back home anytime. But the longer I stay out, the longer the journey back will be.

Chapter 12: Le Mot Juste

I called what I do a trip once. That wasn’t quite right. I still really don’t know what to call it.

Adventure makes it seem like I set out to engage an enemy or get into trouble.

Investigation is more accurate, but also more clinical. And it wasn’t just one mystery I wanted to unravel, but hundreds.

Journey implies that all this has a predetermined ending point, which it doesn’t. I don’t know how I’ll know when I’ve reached the end of all this. I think I won’t know until it hits me.

Mistake? Possibly.

For now, maybe experiment is best.

Chapter 13: Haggard

I caught a glimpse of myself in a puddle this afternoon. It was in a parking lot, and the surface of the puddle was swirled with some oily residue that danced in the sunlight. I look like hell, and I wish I could blame it on how dirty the water was.

I never knew that people actually looked waxy or drawn when they were sick, but I really look like some reject from Madame Tussaud’s.

I’ve been going non-stop. Pretty much anyway. I think I just need to pause here a while. No agenda. Put my curiosity on ice and rest.

Chapter 14: Tell me a story to kick at the dark…

I didn’t bring much. My bugout bag has vitamins, MREs, cash. Just the basics to subsist in worlds where I can’t earn a paycheck. I abandoned a fortune to become a vagabond, and sometimes I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.

It’s never been this hard. There’s been too much death lately.

I want to go home, but I’m sure that will pass. I’m holed up, waiting for something to happen. A sign, something saintly to show me I made the right choice. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

I miss you. I’ll find you soon.

Chapter 15: Meager Hearts

So here, I see, we made the same foolish choice.

I’m watching like a burglar from just outside their living room window, and she’s clutching his dead body. His left shoulder is burgundy, not from blood, but from tears darkening the red fabric. Our hearts break simultaneously, mine for the second time.

We must have made different decisions somewhere along the way, but right now I cannot stay, and I cannot say how we differed.

There has to be a way to save him. Right?

I will find him. Even if it takes me the rest of my natural life.

Chapter 16: Ambition

The question is: Am I ambitious?

I could say that no one has ever done this before. And I’d be partially right. No person other than Margery Jones has done this…but there have to be dozens of me, maybe even hundreds just like me who are also on the move.

I did this because I could not see that I had any other choice. The possibility was there, it was impossible to resist, so I started off.

What is the difference between ambition and destiny? And why does even asking that question, relevant though it may be, make me feel corrupt?

Chapter 17: Cigarettes and Broken Eggshells

I’m lying in bed, aching for a cigarette though I haven’t smoked in years. Even when I did smoke, I’m pretty sure I did it wrong. I rarely let it hit my lungs; I smoked cigarettes like they were fine Cuban cigars, just savoring the mouthfeel of the smoke.

The path from my cot to the kitchen is littered with eggs I threw in a fit of rage last night, their sticky albumen weeping over aging linoleum. I dance around the slicks of the eggs, opening a cabinet.

Thank god. A pack of Djarums bought in last night’s drunkenness. Carpe diem.

Chapter 18: Whirring

There’s a sound like insects coming from behind me, but when I whirl around, it’s just two kids riding bikes. They