A Touch Too Close - Part 3

Three Potential Answers 

My first memory is unreliable. It is mired in the shifts and rewrites of retrospect and thoughtful analysis.

My first memory is strong. There is an impression left by the memory which reverberates through my entire life.

My first memory is of my mouth clinging to Codie's chest as I suckle from her right nipple. I remember her smile as she looks down at me and I remember how she looks over to Harper, just out of contact, as he makes playful hand gestures to me.

Even then, my mind seized upon this moment and tried to break it down into meaning. My first attempts were feeble. But it was a beginning.

The first attempts by my parents to make meaning of their incidents began with a call to room extension 1923 of Derbin Hall, the room of pre-med student Michael Veller.

Veller would later be referred to numerous times in medical papers written about my parent's situation. None of the instances were the least bit flattering to Michael Veller. In certain informal instances, Veller's intelligence, family line, and basic physical anatomy have all been questioned to varying degrees.

Despite these academic misgivings, all presented in retrospect, Veller was playing catch in his dorm with a human skull at the moment when he received the all-important call from Codie.

The skull, which was not referred to as Yorick but rather 'Slim' by the other pre-med students, had been procured by Veller from a skeleton in a professor's literal closet. Within hours, Veller planned to plant the skull under the covers of an ex-girlfriend's bed as a joke.

Slim's skull rotated with backspin into Veller's catcher's mitt, borrowed from a roommate on the baseball team, as his cellphone vibrated across his desk. The momentary distraction was enough to affect Veller's attention on the flight path of the skull, which skimmed the edge of his glove and tumbled out of sight under his bed.

Cursing in a bastardized form of Latin, Veller searched under his bed for five seconds before he glared at his cell phone and finally answered the call with a sigh and the question, "Yeah?"

Codie spoke quickly, beginning with reminding Veller of their acquaintance before presenting the situation as, "Me and a friend have something strange going on. If you could help us out…"

Veller had a mental litany of responses ranging from the often-encouraged, "I am not a doctor. Go see one", to accusations of time-wasting. But the choice he selected was a huff of exasperation followed by, "Meet me over at Collins Hall, room 314."

Mr. Veller's reasons for this decision could be deciphered through an exhaustive, pinpoint neuro-chemical analysis followed by an examination of his development leading up to this situation. But such things have been thoroughly explored by others. Suffice it to say, Veller likely has more innate curiosity than contemporaries give him credit.

He expressed further signs of curiosity upon physically meeting Codie and Harper at the door of room 314. His expectations of the pair dwindled from a vast, mental set of possibilities like a flow chart reaching a bottleneck. His eyes traced across them several times. He immediately took notice of the conspicuous distance between the couple.

Veller set aside an examination area and began with the question, "So, what's going on?"

Harper sighed first, weighing a more long-winded approach against just getting right to the present concern. Codie grimaced thrice and asked Harper, "Should we just show him?"

Veller narrowed his eyes and pressed a ballpoint pen to his lips as his mental litany shifted to the possibility of an unforeseen prank. This line of thought had more to do with Veller's short-term thoughts about his own ideas than any actual evidence before him.

The growing shape of a snide remark was snuffed out as Harper and Codie nodded to one another and clasped hands. They both turned to Veller and let ten seconds pass.

Clear neurological effects can be measured in Veller's mind. Papers have studied the various psychological responses on particular personalities to seeing the 'shift'. Many have found nuance in later reactions. I always find Veller's response the most interesting.

Veller flails against his chair while his eyes widen. His mouth undulates like a fish struggling out of water. His blood pressure and heart rate all increase by percentages comparable to an animalistic fear response. His bladder also twitches from stress. Spasmodically, Veller mutters a jumbled string of profanities and runs from his chair and into the hallway, gagging and screaming.

If Veller hadn't run out at that exact moment and in the exact way he had, then it's likely he never would have been stopped by one of his professors. But since he did, he was. This universe seems to favor such moments of coincidence.

The professor restored some degree of clinical calm to Veller as he relayed what he had witnessed. With fair-minded incredulity, the professor gave Veller three pats on the shoulder and entered the room in place of his student.

The professor, Dr. Sam Allan Counter, would later compose copious notes relating to the physiological shifts of Codie and Harper. After studying them at length, it is clear Dr. Counter knew extensively what was not happening to the both of them when they were in physical contact but little in regard to what was.

In the time since Veller had rapidly left the room, Codie and Harper restored themselves to their normal forms with another touch. While both felt a subtraction of mood from the reaction of Mr. Veller, Dr. Counter soon put them at ease.

Questioning turned to the matter causing Veller's "extravasation" from the room. The term was Counter's, chucklingly uttered, in regard to his young charge.

Cautiously, Codie and Harper repeated their prior demonstration. To say Doctor Counter was surprised would be merely paraphrasing his thoughts at the time. He would recollect (quite accurately) in a later document that "it seemed as though the whole of the universe and all my feeble knowledge was crashing down on top of me."

Some days are like that.

I could follow the immediate shock and restoration of something resembling scientific method so far as Dr. Counter's examinations were concerned. Instead, I prefer to linger on Codie and Harper.

Both had been to doctors before in their lives. Neither had anything resembling a phobia towards medical practitioners. But fear is natural when even a professional reverts to stupefied staring and head-shaking at your current condition. This fear, in both Codie and Harper, was seasoned with a very natural anxiety about exclusion.

To all the world, till this moment, Codie and Harper would seem to be the same (within typical variation) as every other human being on the planet. While their genetic codes in both forms would be later examined, with eggs and semen cataloged, nothing out of the ordinary would ever be shown beyond some middling predispositions towards cancer and heart disease within their next fifty years of life. Every test that Dr. Counter would eventually advise (most very costly), when eventually done, would register no abnormalities. Even scans taken in the midst of change would only reveal a sudden shift between one normal and another.

Codie and Harper were normal and yet they would never be seen that way again. And both realized that possibility.  

Both listened as Dr. Counter's mind turned with ideas. His predominant solution --- "A weird hormonal imbalance" --- came more as a rambling mental process than any scientific conclusion.

Of course, this first of many incorrect answers ignored the changes in their attire.

Quiet doubt atoms traded electrons of regret between Codie and Harper. While Harper imagined what it would've been like to keep something like this hidden, except perhaps from her sister, Codie's mind swarmed with a future of them as lab rats.

As though he could sense the growing tension, and to his credit, Dr. Counter leaned forward and touched, with the benefit of his wide arm span, Codie and Harper each on their altered shoulders.

It was an act I'd never be able to repeat for myself when growing up.

After misguiding his not-quite patients through a series of obscure whiffs of diagnosis, Dr. Counter struck upon a notion near to one pondered by Harper. He phoned an acquaintance with expertise in physics who actually was one of the teachers of Harper's roommate.

This acquaintance, Dr. Phillip Worth, at that moment, is having a discussion with a friend regarding developments in quantum entanglement to send and record information across vast distances. The friend, a philosophy professor named Dr. Michael Peasant, with less than armchair knowledge of quantum physics, manages to offer varied and cogent reactions.

While Dr. Worth has recently made much of this particular conversation and the means by which it is a permanent record...coincidence is a far more logical conclusion.

Here, I fast forward through the transitional period which brings all three men into the same room to puzzle at and then gape in surprise at these two undergraduate students presenting an accidental mystery that shall consume the rest of their careers.

The gallery of three is more than the comfort level for Codie and Harper, especially with the terminology and questions tossed about. Harper imagines bugs pinned to boards. Codie feels the eyes and a flash of his memory. There is something to his thought, something more of the incident that seems so elusive. This time, a lightning-like blast traces an engraving.

It is more than enough for me to follow, but later.

In an observation, much like mine but decades removed, the physicist comes to the most rational theory that the evidence can allow.

"Wormholes."

He suggests a human-triggered wormhole tampering with the fabric of reality. It sounds more like excess babble from an old science-fiction program. It reminds me of the flailings of past century minds to comprehend how the Sun can possess enough wood to burn for so long.

It is a beginning. It is utterly wrong, but it is a valiant failure.

A third and final postulation of this early time comes from Dr. Peasant as the nuance of the back-and-forth lobs of theorizing fail him. He smiles at Codie and Harper and asks them how they feel about all this.

Easy words for both Codie and Harper have shriveled up in the presence of minds that seem to dwarf theirs. Dr. Peasant urges them on and Harper says, "I just wish I knew what was going on. It seems we can control it. Which is neat…"

Codie forces on a grimace and notes, "It's good we can control it. But we're clueless."

Dr. Peasant sets his shoulders and tells them firmly, "Clueless is where we all are most times with the mysteries of the world. Questions are our tools. And answers rarely come from others…just places to start asking stronger questions."

While Dr. Peasant offered no concrete answer for Codie and Harper, their heart rates and anxieties both lower with his presence.

As the tri-fold questions and possibilities went around the room, Codie and Harper come to their own conclusions. They decide to excuse themselves.

While two professors stammered for contact information and further tests, Dr. Peasant smiled behind the twin support of his hands against his chin. Codie and Harper leave contact information but with the requirement that their legally-bound confidentiality be kept for the time being.

Such confidentiality would remain for three further class sessions, a temporary reprieve for the loss of their anonymity.

Codie and Harper go with lingering fears but wafting relief spreading like a wash of air.
  
Harper would soon consider whether to tell her sister about what was going on and then her parents. For now, she sees the energizing calm of Codie's face as they walk. Codie would soon consider a nap to clear his mind before even imagining telling more people. For now, he sees the watchful, gentle gaze of Harper behind her glasses.

Their romance seems incomprehensible to me yet and still they are certain like an atomic bond holding a pair of particles forever tracing one another's orbit. Their future, despite the cheating of a perfect, quantum record, is clear even in these fledgling moments. No touch limitation of ten seconds or sullen moments locked in the shower can shake their inevitability.

I can see that even now, though I cannot touch them. My only touch left is that through preserved events. And, for me, it is both too distant and too near to be what I need.