The portal appeared in the break room at 2:34pm every weekday and remained suspended in the air for exactly thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds before it blinked out of existence. This is what Liam concluded after three weeks of near constant observation. He’d moved his desk so that he could see into the room even when he wasn’t in it, stayed after hours, reviewed security footage for any periods where he’d been asleep. His colleagues had started to worry about him, telling him that he should go home and get some rest. Every time he explained that he was trying to understand the portal, and asked why they didn’t want to know any more about it, they just shrugged and said they already had enough going on.
Once he’d established when the portal was open, Liam went back to his regular schedule – of course, adding a fifteen minute coffee break to his afternoon, where he’d stand in the break room and stare through the portal. It hovered at around the height of his head, and was large enough that he could have put a hand through it, if he dared. The portal seemed to lead to another office, indistinguishable from any corporate environment Liam had ever seen: white walls, dull furnishings, the background thrum of machinery.
On his fifth day gazing into that office, he met Patricia. She caught his eye as she walked past and said hello. They had a polite conversation, and agreed to meet at the same time the next day. As the afternoons went on, they asked one another questions about life in their respective worlds, which turned out to be essentially the same: the same laws of physics, the same histories, the same cultural and political figures, the same companies, the same foods, the same colours and hopes and dreams.
For a few days they suspected that the portal joined two offices in the same world, and they arranged to meet at a specified place at a specified time, but each experienced the pain of waiting for someone who would never arrive. Neither of them could believe that they had somehow found a portal leading to a parallel universe that was, for all intents and purposes, no different to their own.
During the sixth straight week of their daily conversations, Liam realised that he was developing feelings for Patricia. He wondered whether she felt the same, but also knew that even if she did, there was no way they could act on it. The portal was too small to move through, and as far as he was aware, it was the only way to pass between their respective universes. Still, this lack of stakes meant that he was willing to admit his feelings readily, and Patricia told him she reciprocated. They agreed that they wouldn’t describe it as love, that would be too grandiose and final, but they had a deep sense that there was potential here, if not for their specific circumstance with relation to the portal and its limitations.
One afternoon, Patricia brought some tools with her to try expanding the boundaries of the portal, but it wouldn’t budge. It was fixed in space, the edges acting as a hard rim until it disappeared again. The next day, Liam placed a coat rack where he knew the portal was about to appear, wondering if he might disrupt it somehow, but the rack was gently shifted to one side, as if by a large magnet, as the hole tore through the air.
These unfortunate failures were made even more unfortunate by the following months, during which Patricia and Liam fell deeply in love. There was no question: they had found the person they were meant to be with, but could not be. In this way, their daily meeting at the portal became central to their lives.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world did not respond to this burning need. Liam was eventually fired, and was forced to ask his former colleagues to allow him to secretly enter the building for twenty minutes every day in order to speak with Patricia. Years later, the office Patricia worked in was demolished, and she had to wait for another building to be constructed before she could reach the portal again, which had previously been situated on the third floor of her company’s building. Prior to this, she made her way onto the construction site several times to clamber up the scaffolding and peer through the portal, and on one occasion was arrested.
This is how their lives went: every day they would do their best to make it to the portal. The other may or may not be there, but this would not stop them trying. No one else ever seemed to care about the portal that defined their lives, and the world carried on, generating obstacles and limitations at every turn.
Of course, as is inevitable, life itself became an obstacle. Their love continued into old age, fortunately still possible despite changes in building ownership, layout and even existence. But, eventually, one of them passed away. Though it was gentle, and painless, they had no way to tell the other.
So, as they had always done during these absences, the remaining partner simply kept returning to the portal, day after day, always hoping for one more glimpse, one more conversation, with the only person they cared about, a person in another world.
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A Quick Recommendation
I had this story recommended to me a week or two ago, and when I started reading it I almost instantly felt it do something wonderful to my brain.
I meet Tyler Burnett at a party I’ve been invited to. People in the town have parties often. Tyler Burnett wears dark sunglasses always, even at night. I cannot see through his sunglasses. Some people say they might be painted black. I think he may have no eyes. Nevertheless there is a romantic energy between us. It’s still somewhat difficult for me to understand people when they speak here, but I understand much more than I did in the first few days. Tyler Burnett says “Chemicals and fishing, the water. Yes, television. Art, no. A walk. To swim. Jokes and such are not my kind. Sexy and rubs are my sort of thing. With you, something distracting.” He is the most interesting person I’ve met.
You can read the story, ‘The Babysitter at Rest’ by Jen George, in BOMB Magazine.
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