Simon Peter Stewart left Earth completely by accident on Christmas Eve 1990.
He couldn’t stand to be at home that night, so he’d gone for a drive. Headed out of Edmonton. Got on Highway 16 and put his pedal to the floor.
Pete wasn’t a good person back then. Or rather, he always tried to be. If he’d had any idea that his views or his values were harmful to anyone, he’d have changed. But he was trapped in the cage of what he’d been taught.
His ancient Tercel had a crappy stereo system – even by the standards of the day. No cassettes, no CD player. This was strictly AM/FM radio. It was tuned to 630 CHED and it was blasting out the tunes.
That’s when it happened. Whatever it was.
He was singing along to Whitney Houston’s ‘I’m Your Baby Tonight’ – belting out the title line and thumping his hand on the steering wheel – when it cut out. He carried on singing for a bit before he noticed anything.
The memory was all muddled up in his head. There was light. Blinding light. And he thought he’d crashed the car.
But he can’t have done.
Somehow, he found himself shivering on the road next to one of those weird little cars he saw on films set in England. Another part of his brain insisted it wasn’t a car at all. It was a get-off: a ground-to-orbit vehicle. It had to be bigger than a car. It was pulled over on the side of the road, four-way flashers blinking.
Maybe.
Multiple layers of memories superimposed themselves over one another in his mind.
Much later, he learnt that he’d been subjected to a probability field that night. There’s a reason the use of probability fields is supposed to be strictly regulated. Improper use can result in fractured memories: all jumbled up together, with each fragment seeming equally real.
If you want to see how the story has evolved over the course of the writing, check out this earlier draft of the same text.
