"Three Minutes Ahead": Imagine a Loss That Reaches Across Galaxies

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From the Expression staff:

In recognition of the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, we asked our subscribers and friends to share a "love story" with us with the understanding that "love" could be defined in any way they chose--that their response did not have to be serious essays about the greatest love of their lives (though they could be) but could be more lighthearted. Over the next few days we will share the submissions.

by anne m gibson

I don’t know how the gate was left open. It was too heavy for my dog, Charlie, to pull open, and as far as we knew the gate latching mechanism was secure. Mom and I never figured it out, and I don’t think any of the other mes in any of the other universes did either.

Either way, Charlie was gone.

“Mom!” I yelled, banging my way in the back door from the yard. “Charlie’s gone, the gate’s open, I don’t know where he is!”

Mom was in her office, and she immediately grabbed her keys. “Did you have a premonition?” she asked.

I nodded. I’d had one just before I went out to check on Charlie. I was terrified. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Grab a bottle of Charlie’s treats. You walk around the neighborhood and I’ll take the car. Shake the treats while you call him. Sit down if you have another premonition, and don’t get locked in a trance all day. I don’t want you getting hurt!”

“Leslie? I’m not going to make that faculty meeting…” Mom said into her phone as she headed toward the door.

I could tell she was angry. It had taken a lot of work for my parents to get the insurance companies to cover my service dog. Charlie’s my service dog, and his job is unusual. He protects me from “premonition-induced catatonia.” That essentially means I fall into a trance when I see the future.

See, there are millions of universes that were born at the same time that ours was, in the Big Bang. In most of them, the Milky Way formed, and in most of those, the Sun formed. In some of those, Earth formed the way that we know it, but in most of them it didn’t. So right now, Mom says, there are maybe a hundred thousand Earths like ours. And on those Earths, there’s a few hundred instances of me, one per universe. There’s also a few hundred instances of Mom and Dad, and most of us live in Pennsylvania in the United States and call the current month November.

But Mom says there’s something wrong with our universe, which the physicists she leads at the university call Earth Minus 3. Our universe is running approximately three minutes behind the other universes in time.

If our universe ran at the same speed as the others, precognition wouldn’t exist. But because our universe is slow, people like me can “see” what’s happening to the other universes. When big things happen in the other universes, I get a “premonition” of what’s going to happen here, three minutes before it happens.

I’d had a premonition that hundreds of me in other universes had discovered their dogs missing, so I’d checked on Charlie, and sure enough, he was gone. That was the part that sucked about being a precog. I can see what’s going to happen, but I can’t stop it. Mom says that our “predestination is mathematically determined by events that have already occurred”. I’ve memorized that because I have to keep telling my friends that being a precog doesn’t mean I can get the winning lottery numbers. (They’re different in almost every universe, by the way.)

I ran out the back door, across the yard and through the back gate. The houses in my neighborhood have big yards, and not all of them are fenced, so there were plenty of places Charlie could go to hide. We live in a big housing development in the Philadelphia suburbs. The wind was chilly, and I’d forgotten to grab a jacket. The sky was grey, but not rainy, and the grass was dying, but not brown. I guess I was lucky Charlie ran away now and not in the snow, but if I could’ve picked, September has nicer weather.

“CHARLIE!” I yelled. “CHAAARRRRRLLLIIIIIIEEEEEE”. I shook the bottle of treats. It’s been four years since I was outside without him. I felt like part of me was naked. I suddenly realized I hadn’t grabbed his leash.

I looked around the neighbors’ yards but didn’t see or hear anything that might be my dog. Charlie’s not very big, only about fifteen pounds. Dad says he’s some kind of terrier, but nobody’s sure. “Charlie!”

My vision went fuzzy and blurry. I sat down on the sidewalk. My head filled with a kind of whirring or clacking noise, like someone was spinning a bicycle wheel with a playing card clipped to it. While it spun, dozens of different images came into focus, as if I was looking out of fifty other peoples’ eyes. Fifty other versions of me, who lived in fifty other universes, all cut between the houses ahead instead of walking on the street. Click, click, click, click, clack. The images all came to life with sound. Three of me found Charlie under a bush at that house just ahead. The others didn’t find anything and kept walking. One of us was crying.

I shook myself loose from the vision. All my trances take place when lots of other versions of me are freaking out. Short trances like this one are easy to break out of. Long ones are harder. One time I was in one for over three minutes and the future became my present. Charlie’s trained to disrupt my trance by nudging or pawing or nipping me.

I ran between the houses.

Charlie wasn’t underneath the bushes.

I shook the bottle of treats again as I paced through the backyards. I tried to see and hear everything, the birds in the trees, the wind blowing, the traffic down the busy road a few blocks away.

What if he’s been hit by a car? I wondered. “Charlie!” I called, but he was nowhere. If he’s been hit by a car we’ll take him to the vet, I reassured myself. “Come on, Charlie, this isn’t funny anymore! CHAAAARLIIIIEEEE!”

He wasn’t in the drainage field. He wasn’t in Mrs. Cuthbert’s vegetable garden or hiding under the rusting cars at the creepy house at the end of the road. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t under anyone’s deck. “Charlie! Come on out! I’ll give you the whole bottle of treats, buddy!”

When we first got him, I didn’t even like Charlie. Getting a dog sounded fun, until I found out my parents expected me to take care of him every day. They made me get rid of my really cool loft bed because Charlie couldn’t jump in and out of it. They made me quit rock climbing class because Dad insisted I couldn’t do anything unless Charlie could go with me, which was ridiculous.

I mean, I don’t even really need a dog. I was doing perfectly fine in school without him. Well, except for the kids who picked on me for trancing in class. And those times I missed the bus. Okay and once - just once - I fell off an escalator at the mall and almost got my shoelace caught.

Now Dad won’t let me wear shoes with laces anymore, and I have to take Charlie everywhere.

Funny how now that I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for years—go outside without him—it feels really weird.

I walked along the edge of the woods at the back end of the development and hoped Charlie wasn’t in there. There was a big ravine where the college kids went to smoke weed occasionally. It was filled with poison ivy and snakes and stuff and Mom didn’t let me back there.

My vision blurred again and I grabbed one of the trees for support. Click, click, click, click, clack. More universes came into focus this time, probably close to seventy five. Roughly half of them were versions of me who turned away from the woods, and the rest turned toward them. The ones who turned away were quiet, but the ones who went into the woods thought they saw Charlie on the other side of the ravine and started yelling like crazy. A few of them turned back to get help.

Most of the others tried to cross the ravine — either by jumping or by using an old wood plank as a bridge. Others tried to climb down to get him, and a few tried to cross the ravine on an old wooden plank that snapped when they tried to cross it. All of the ones who jumped missed, and all of the planks snapped. All of the mes I could see fell into the ravine. They broke their legs or their collar bones mostly. I could feel the breaks—not enough to hurt, but an annoying tingle.

One of me didn’t get up. She’d banged her head on a cement block that wasn’t in the ravine for the others. A moment later, her image disappeared from the set.

I broke free from the trance then. I don’t know how long I’d been in it that time, but I’m pretty sure it was longer than three minutes. It was the second time I’d seen me die in a different universe. The first time had been in a school bus accident that only happened in a handful of universes. My chest and back ached like I’d been holding my breath.

I hadn’t seen Charlie in any of the visions in the woods, though one of me who’d turned away found him down the street. I decided my chances were better that direction. “CHARLIE!” I bellowed. “CHARLIE COME HOME!” I shook the treat bottle and started walking again.

The thing is, I hated Charlie when I first got him, but I don’t hate him anymore. I mean, yeah, I really really wish he’d stop shredding napkins if I forgot to throw them out. But the rest of the time, he’s happy to be at my side just hanging out. I’ve been using cheese to teach him tricks, like “sit up” and “shake”, that my friends think are really cool. He loves cheese, and potato chips, and I sneak him liver when Dad makes it for dinner. He turns the lights off for me when we go to bed. And I’m the only one who can take my dog to the mall or the beach or a baseball game.

Sometimes I watch him sleep, his chest rolling up and down, as if nothing’s wrong in the world. When he dreams, he makes these tiny “yip” noises. I think he’s chasing squirrels. Charlie hates squirrels.

I don’t want to give him up, I realized. Some day I’ll have to, maybe ten years from now when he’s a really old dog and I’m through college, but I don’t want it to be today.

“Charlie!” I yelled. I shook the bottle of treats. Nothing.

Suddenly I was convinced he was dead—not like a premonition, but like that worrying that grabs onto your brain and won’t let go. How will I explain to my friends that I let my dog out without checking the gate? I was careless, and it had cost me. I’ll have to email all my teachers so they know I’ll be trancing in class again, and see if I can get extensions on my mid-terms. What if they don’t want to give me extensions? I mean, it’s my fault he’s gone. I just wanted to play another level of Australian Rocket Fest before I took him out. I should’ve known something would happen. It always happens when I get lazy.

“CHARLIE!! CHARLIE I’M SORRY, PLEASE COME HOME,” I yelled.

I didn’t care if I was going to be grounded, or have to go back to dog training class, or have to take Charlie everywhere including the bathroom from now on. I just wanted him to come home.

Click, click, click, click, clack. My vision didn’t even have time to come into focus. I think every me that was alive and looking for her dog was in my view. Our phones were ringing. We all tapped our bluetooth earbuds and said, “Mom?” in unison.

“I found him,” she said.

“Is he okay?” all of me asked.

“He was hit by a car,” Mom said. “You’d better come home to say goodbye.”

“NO!” I cried out, shaking myself out of the vision. “No! I don’t want it to be that way!”

I tried to think, which was hard because the leftover emotions hundreds of me were still trying to crowd into my head. What did none of the others do? What can I do differently?

I know Mom and all the physicists say that everything is predestined. But if I really am the only one of the hundreds of mes that knows what the others did and how it worked out, maybe I could cheat and do something else. I mean, I couldn’t just stand here and wait for the phone call.

I ran back to the house faster than I’d ever run before. I grabbed the block of American cheese from the refrigerator. Then, I ran out to the front sidewalk. If future-Mom said I would have to come home to say goodbye, I hoped that meant Charlie was near the house when he was hit in the other universes.

I spotted Charlie almost immediately. He was hunched down on the sidewalk a few doors down, stalking a squirrel. I had no idea if he’d been there the whole time, or if he’d just come home. But Charlie loved chasing squirrels, and there was a truck turning onto our street. Even from where I was I could see Charlie’s leg muscles tensing, and I knew if he tried to chase the squirrel across the street, he’d never make it.

“CHARLIE, CHEESE!” I yelled.

Charlie’s head whipped around and he ran toward me as if he hadn’t seen me in a hundred years. He bolted up the sidewalk to the house, then sat perfectly in front of me, his eyes darting between me and the block of cheese.

I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him inside while he ate the cheese I fed him from my other hand. He felt slimy. I kicked the door closed just as my phone rang.

“Mom?” I asked.

“Honey, I can’t—“

“Mom, I found him!” I interrupted. “He was hunting squirrels in front of the Robinsons’ house. And—eew—I think he rolled in something. Rotting pumpkin?” I wiped my hand on my jeans just to get the gunk off but it was everywhere. “Charlie, where did you find a pumpkin in November?”

I could hear the relief and annoyance in my mom’s voice when she said, “Well, you’d better get him cleaned up. Your father’s on his way home from work by now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I sighed. I was sort of hoping Mom would come home and clean him up because now that he was in the house he smelled really bad. And he was really happy about smelling really bad. His service dog harness was smeared with rotting gunk, and his muzzle was tinted orange.

“Ugh, stupid dog!” I grumbled. I picked him up. He happily licked my face. “Don’t you try to butter me up! You’re getting gross all over me! You’re ruining my shirt!” I carried him up the steps to the bathroom, closed the door, and set him down. If he hadn’t managed to smear grossness all over me I would have dumped him in the tub, but now that I was disgusting too it was easier to just put him in the shower with me. Dad says that’s one of the nice parts of a small dog.

I got undressed and started the water, then carried Charlie into the shower. (There was no way he was going in on his own. He hates showers.) I unclipped his harness and did my best to clean it with bar soap and hot water. Charlie snapped at the water that fell on his head. If he could have curled into the wall, he would have.

When his harness and collar were as clean as I could make them, I hung them on the shower rail. I grabbed the dog shampoo and lathered Charlie up. He bit the soap bubbles then made weird faces with his tongue out. “Shampoo isn’t food, dummy,” I said, still angry. I lifted him up into the stream of water. His back claws scratched my stomach and he whined while he tried to climb out of my grip.

Click, click, click, click, clack. About a hundred of me came into focus. There were too many to hear clearly, but I could feel them all. Charlie had died in so many universes. I was overwhelmed with how much their grief hurt. We just wanted to hold him one more time. We just wanted to pet him while we watched tv on the sofa. We just wanted to play ball with him and make him wear funny halloween costumes and show him off to our friends and we could never do it again because he was gone, he was never coming back, it hurt so much…

Charlie nipped me on the shoulder. I almost dropped him out of surprise as I shook off the trance. Here he was, my dog, my strong and smart boy, all muscle and floppy ears and long nails and clear brown eyes.

I sat down in the tub, sobbing, holding him, telling him how much I loved him. Charlie licked my face and wagged his tail and sat on my lap.

I don’t know how I found the strength to get us both cleaned up and out of the shower, because I was still crying. Mom met me at the bathroom door with a clean set of clothes. Her eyes were full of worry.

“Millicent, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Did you have another premonition?”

I tried to explain but most of it was just crying and babble. Then I tried again while I got dressed, and I must have made more sense that time.

“Oh, Millie, you amazing girl,” Mom said.

“Mom, he died everywhere, everywhere except for a handful of places, and it hurts so much.” I sniffled. Charlie wagged at my feet.

“Let’s go downstairs and get some tea,” Mom said.

We followed her downstairs. I sat at the kitchen table. I pulled Charlie up into my lap. “This is where you sit from now on,” I whispered, “even if I’m playing video games.”

“Now tell me again what happened,” Mom said when she set the mug of steaming tea in front of me.

“I called Charlie away from the squirrel with some cheese,” I said, “because nobody else did. So almost everyone else’s Charlie died today and mine didn’t and Mom I feel so bad for them…” I trailed off as the tears started running down my cheeks again. “I hate being a precog!” I sobbed. “I hate it. I just want to not-know things like everyone else!”

“But your Charlie lived,” Mom said. “You did something we thought was impossible. Saved him. And you couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t seen what happened to the others.” Mom sipped her tea. “That’s, well, that’s pretty amazing. That’s write-a-paper amazing. You changed the course of this universe by watching all the others, and we didn’t think that time would allow it.”

“I know,” I sniffled. I sniffed my tea. “It feels like cheating, though. What if he was supposed to die? What if something horrible happens here now because Charlie didn’t die? What if—Mom, what if I broke the universe?”

“If it takes breaking the universe to keep someone you love alive, Millie, you break the universe.” Mom replied quietly.

“So it’s okay?” I asked.

“You just rewrote physics with American cheese and a terrier, baby. It’s definitely okay.”

~ anne (kent) gibson, class of ’94, now in Pottstown, PA

"Three Minutes Ahead" was originally published in Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume 6, available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/07ZOMvFo. The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guides are a series of science fiction books for middle-grade readers.

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