POA ch011 — Ask Naomi about the Voicemail

Summary: Naomi provides some key lore. Ash facetimes their mum. Henry sleeps.

Author's Notes: Thank you, as always, for reading, voting, liking, and commenting on the previous chapter.

Content Warnings: Descriptions of injuries.

“Alright, why don’t you pick up the evil eye pendant, next?” Naomi says.

“Oh, sure,” Henry begins, and picks up the pendant. He’s about ready to drop his curiosity entirely, but his jaw locks, and then he feels you flex his tongue, contracting his glottis, and passing air through his vocal cords.

“Naomi, why did you leave me that voicemail?” Henry’s voice asks. It comes out a little robotic, like he’d forgotten how to use a human vocal tract. Like you don’t know how to use a human vocal tract, and are just trying it out for the first time.

Naomi glances up at Henry and searches his expression.

“Is that you asking, or them?”

Henry’s voice is his own again, and he shrugs. “Both, I guess. I wanted to know, too. I just wasn’t sure whether to ask.”

Naomi’s eyes skitter across you, but her next question is directed at Henry. “Are you getting anything from the evil eye?”

Henry holds the pendant up and examines it. Blue, white, and black glass in an eerie circle. Henry always liked the little pendants; they were everywhere when his parents took him to Athens one summer. The pendant rotates gently on its string, dangling beneath Henry’s fingers.

Fear seizes Henry as the pendant rotates, turning ever so slowly to face him. Eye-to-eye, Henry squints and turns away.

It’s not painful, exactly. But Henry — or, perhaps, the beings inhabiting him — do not want to look at it.

“What was that?” Naomi asks, observing him closely.

“Just don’t much like it staring at me,” Henry grumbles, annoyed that Naomi had guessed correctly.

“Hmm,” Naomi says, and marks something on her clipboard. Is she even going to answer the question?

I wonder, Henry thinks.

But just when it seems she’s not going to say anything, she looks up from her clipboard. She doesn’t look Henry in the eyes (Naomi rarely looks anyone in the eyes), but she faces him.

“I’ve… spoken about my research, haven’t I?”

“A bit.”

Naomi bites her lip, twiddling the pen in her hands.

“The voicemail kind of cut out, but you mentioned something about String Theory, right? That’s, like, the idea that all matter is made up of strings, rather than… than particles?” Henry prompts.

“More or less,” Naomi agrees. “I mean, you’re right in the sense that you’re using all the right words. The strings of traditional string theory aren’t exactly like, you know, the strings that make up your clothing. They’re one-dimensional. But they vibrate.”

“Like the strings of Ash’s cello?”

Naomi nods. “Exactly. And the way they vibrate, their vibrational state, determines their properties. It gets much more complicated when we get into branes and superstrings and M-theory and that kind of thing.”

“Okay,” Henry says slowly, “So, why did you… why did you warn me against joining the study?”

“It’s— sorry, it’s kind of a long story, I guess. I just suddenly panicked when I heard you had decided to do it.”

Henry waits expectantly, and offers her an encouraging smile.

Naomi heaves a large breath. “Right. Okay. So, I’m not working with Dr. Pembroke on the study you’re in, but my diss is similarly related to Professor Wilkins’ research. He’s taking a new and—” Naomi chuckles. “—not altogether respected approach to the idea of strings? I think many of his colleagues at other institutions consider his theories rather eccentric or poetic.”

“Sounds a bit more my speed, honestly,” Henry jokes.

“Maybe. I mean, okay, this is going to be a bit of an oversimplification, but think of it like this. You know the idea of alternate or extra dimensions?”

“Sure,” Henry says. “In more a literary, sci-fi sense than anything else.”

“Right. Traditional string theory, in order for it to work, requires a number of extra dimensions — beyond our typical set of three spatial dimensions and the fourth time dimension, I mean. Professor Wilkins is investigating the nature of these other dimensions. He himself has a penchant for sci-fi, and so he took a rather more, er, romantic view of things. What properties do these other dimensions have? How were they formed? Can we detect them? Are there beings out there that can sense or manipulate them? Is a universe just a set of four-dimensional spacetime, and does that imply that the other dimensions required are other universes, bumping up against each other? Is it all just a question of semantics anyway?”

Naomi abruptly stops, breathing heavily.

“Dang.” Henry whistles appreciatively. “That’s— wow. Enough to give me a headache.”

He jokes, but it doesn’t stretch his brain that much, to think of it. The literary juices in his English major mind are churning away with intriguing implications. More importantly, however, is that somewhere within him, there’s a foreign sense of rightness. This makes sense. An internal guide is coaxing him towards the truth, and Naomi’s explanation is a part of that truth.

“Yeah, sorry, that was a lot,” Naomi offers a half-laugh. “I get easily carried away.”

“I love it,” Henry reassures her. “It’s really cool. So, er, what are you actually researching, in all that?”

“My project is focused on what these other dimensions might be like. Mostly, it’s just a load of mathematical calculations using the fancy computers in the physics building.”

“Cool,” Henry says. “But, so, why would your advisor partner with a neuroscientist?”

“I don’t know that much about their exact study,” Naomi says, “especially not the neuroscience part. Ash might be a better person to ask about this, but Pembroke, as I understand it, is studying the mechanics of decision-making in the human brain. I suspect that Pembroke is doing something that would expose her patients to a different binary state, as it were.”

“What?”

“I— I’m not certain. It’s just a theory, I don’t even know how that would work, or what that would entail.”

“But what do you mean by a ‘binary state’?”

“It’s… something I’ve noticed. In my calculations, there are a few variables which have a very small set of possibilities. Some of those variables are binary — they only have two possible values.”

Henry’s confusion must play across his face, because she softens and rephrases.

“In other words, the fabric of our universe seems to have a lot of on/off switches. Binary characteristics. Choices.”

Choices. Realization dawns in Henry, and his mouth opens in a small ‘o.’

“So,” Naomi continues, seeing him catch on. “Wilkins and I were thinking, what if this is how universes work? What the different dimensions required for string theory are the results of different switches being flipped, at different times? Binary choices.”

“Binary.” Henry latches onto the word, “Like in a computer?”

“Exactly,” Naomi says. The bulk of her explanation finished, she is once again focused on the science experiment before her. “Here, try the silver while I explain further.” She gestures at a small silver locket lying on the table, and then continues.

“Lots of things in our universe work in a binary sort of fashion. Computers, of course. There’s some suggestion in linguistic research to support the idea that binary structures are intrinsic to the basic structure of human language. Chemistry, too — there are compounds, called chiral compounds, that are exactly identical except for a single, binary difference. They’re actually mirror images of each other. Like— like your hands.”

Naomi holds up her hands, facing each other.

“Mirror images.”

She lays one hand over the other, each of her thumbs sticking out on opposite sides.

“But ‘non-superimposable.’ Not identical.”

Henry mirrors and then superimposes his own two hands. He lets out a laugh.

“Mine aren’t even mirror images anymore,” Henry jokes, looking at the one swathed in bandages. But the joke falls flat.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Naomi murmurs. She shakes herself, and continues her explanation. “In chemistry, at least as I understand it, you have loads of these mirror-image molecules. They seem identical at first, but by some quirk of formation they exhibit different properties. The difference might be subtle — mint and caraway are made of all the same atoms, but smell different because they are mirror images of each other.”

“Yum,” Henry says lightheartedly.

“But the difference might also be crucial,” Naomi insists. “For humans, one mirror-image might be a helpful anti-nausea medication, the other causes horrible birth defects.” Her eyes narrow at him, as though accusing him of stalling. Am I stalling?

“Try the silver.”

Henry’s hand pauses on the way to the silver as his mind conjures a history lesson from his mum over dinner.

“Are you talking about thalidomide?” Henry struggles to remember his mum telling him about it. “From the ‘60s?”

“Precisely.”

“So, mirror-images,” Henry says. “And you think, what, that there could be mirror-image universes?”

“A bit of an oversimplification, but, yes.”

“Like Alice in Wonderland? Through the Looking-glass?”

Naomi smirks. “Of course you’d think of that.”

“Hey!” Henry protests. “It was a big reason why I wanted to come to Oxford. I always loved that story.”

“Well, it’s appropriate now, isn’t it?” Naomi scoffs. “Fucking around with these binary differences — in our bodies, our minds, but also in the mathematical equations I work with every day cause huge changes. Astronomical ones. So when I realized that it was the Pembroke-Wilkins study you were going to join, where I know they’re screwing around with these kinds of modifications… I was worried that you’d be irrevocably changed. I thought we’d lose you.”

Henry swallows and thinks, I have been irrevocably changed. He remembers when he first laid eyes on you, looking in the mirror and hearing it’s us.

“You think I’m now, what, Alice?”

“No, I— I think you’re still you. Mostly, at least. You’re still here, in our world. I think if you had gone into ‘Wonderland,’ we’d be seeing a lot more incompatibilities. But I do think we are one side of the mirror. And I think… I think you may have brought Alice, or, or someone else… to us.”

Naomi finally allows a glance at Henry’s face, and shivers run down Henry’s spine.

“The other side might be only somewhat different, or it might be very different.”

“Different how?”

“I think— I mean— Look, substances in our world that are good, or at least harmless—” Naomi watches Henry’s fingers meet the silver locket.

“For someone from the Mirror, those things might be—”

“Ack!” Henry yelps and hisses with pain as the silver unexpectedly sears into his skin, leaving a bright red welt behind.

“—poison.”

…

Henry mulls over Naomi’s explanation as they methodically go through each of the objects in turn. Many of them affect Henry in some way: the silver burns him like acid, the evil eye makes him turn away, the iron horseshoe sends him recoiling, and an unbroken barrier of salt lining a doorway or encircling him keeps him helplessly trapped. That one puzzles Naomi the most. She has Henry eat a few grains of salt and hold them in his hand — no effect. But as soon as she has him stand in the center of the living room and leaves a thick trail of salt in a circle around his feet, he is completely trapped as though encased in a glass tube.

That is when Ash emerges from their room, a bemused look on their face. “Did you do something to Naomi to piss her off while I was tidying? Why are you stuck in a one-foot-by-one-foot circle?”

“We were just finishing up,” Naomi replies. “Most of the well-known superstitions hold true.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Henry says, banging his fists on his invisible cage. “Who designed these rules?”

“Well, we did, didn’t we?” Ash replies cheekily. “Humans, I mean. They all come from various belief systems.”

“Yes, but— surely, if they’ve worked against whatever kind of creature is riding around on Henry, there is some scientific reason why that creature would be weak to these specific things.”

“I mean, maybe— how were you with garlic?” Ash asks, pulling a box of pasta and some other ingredients out of the pantry.

“Just as delicious as ever.”

“Great!” They begin to prepare dinner, peeling the garlic with the side of the knife and then mincing it into fine chunks. They toss the minced garlic into a pan as they speak, and the kitchen fills with a delicious smell.

“Take it from the person studying the brain, alright? Belief is a powerful thing! Who’s to say it can’t be its own kind of physical force?”

Naomi raises a skeptical eyebrow. “What, like, ‘I do believe in fairies,’ in Peter Pan?”

Ash waves the garlicky knife around. “Sure! Why not?”

“Hmm.” Naomi is unconvinced.

“Can someone let me out?” Henry asks, still trapped in the salt circle. With a squawk of appropriate guilt, Naomi kicks at the salt, and Henry is freed.

…

The three of them finish their dinner in companionable silence, and then settle in to watch the latest episode of University Challenge. Henry finds his head lolling with tiredness early in the evening. The events of the day have caught up to him, and his hand is twisting with pain again. Ash and Naomi summarily send him to bed with two pain pills and an ice pack.

“Let me just grab some clothes and get changed,” Henry says to Ash, “and I’ll meet you there.”

Henry gets changed into his pajamas and brushes his teeth. He lingers in front of the mirror, pondering Naomi’s earlier explanation.

Are you really from another world? Henry thinks.

I thought I heard something, before, Henry thinks, when there is no response. But maybe it was my own internal dialogue, playing tricks on me. Or maybe I really am just going crazy.

With a sigh, Henry finishes brushing his teeth and walks back downstairs to Ash’s room. The door is ajar, and Henry can hear Ash video-chatting with their parents. Henry hears the distinctive sounds of their mum’s worried “Oh, Ashu,” followed by a long string of Tamil and punctuated by loud American commentary by Ash’s dad.

A fond memory surfaces in Henry’s mind. The warm brown arms of Ash’s mum, encircling Henry when they’d first come to visit Ash. A petite, soft-spoken psychologist whose Canadian vowels were contoured only slightly by spending her youth in Sri Lanka, her time there cut short by a hurried immigration to Toronto on the heels of burgeoning conflict in the late seventies. Nila, as she insisted Henry call her, made for a stark comparison with the brash loudness of Peter, Ash’s dad — the most New England White Dad one could imagine, standing out in cargo shorts, a polo shirt, socks with sandals, and a baseball cap on the High Street of prim and proper Oxford. Both, however, had a vibrant spirit about them, so unlike Henry’s own parents.

“No, it’ll all be fine,” Ash reassures them. “Just, you know, shocking.”

“Well, you let us know if you need anything,” Ash’s dad cuts in sternly. “And say ‘hi’ to Henry and Naomi for us. Tell him to keep ice on that hand.”

“I will,” Ash promises, and hangs up.

Only then does Henry push the door open and enter, sheepishly.

“Did you tell them all of it?” Henry asks.

“Most. But not all of it. Not all the—” Ash doesn’t finish, but they don’t need to. Henry can fill in the blanks. Not all the unbelievable stuff.

“Sorry for taking over your room,” Henry says, plopping down on one side of Ash’s bed and plugging his phone into the outlet. He glances around Ash’s room.

He’s been in here a handful of times; Ash often leaves the door open and isn’t an especially private person. Ash’s cello sits next to a music stand with sheets of Brahms strewn about. Ash has put fresh sheets on the bed, white with a sheep pattern on it. The room smells of Ash; like citrus and sandalwood. Henry is exhausted, his hand still pinging with pain.

“I’ll be in shortly,” Ash says, and flicks off the lights. “Just need to finish up some work. I’ll try not to wake you.”

Ash shuts the door quietly, and Henry curls up in the bed. He is asleep within minutes.

…

Henry wakes to pain shooting through his hand. He startles, curling in on himself. He feels the press of Ash’s back against his own in the bed, and hears their soft sniffling breaths beside him. The warmth and sound comforts him even as another stab of pain shoots from his hand down his wrist.

Holding in his cries for fear of waking Ash, Henry frantically unwraps the bandages Naomi so carefully applied. When the fabric falls away, Henry picks up his phone and shines it on the flesh of his hand.

The bite marks are horribly inflamed. The skin is red and swollen, stretched out tight and shiny. It’s burning hot to the touch. The teeth must have been venomous. One final parting gift of the Scout.

Henry thinks about Naomi's hypothesis. If those teeth, too, came from some mirror-world, it is hardly surprising that whatever they were coated in was incompatible with Henry’s human hand.

Pain arcs through Henry again, and he grits his teeth. Sweat is breaking out across his brow.

It’s deeply distressing. This is a new kind of pain.

Help me, Henry thinks wildly. If you’re really there, help me.

The pain is awful. It needs to be resolved. With an extension of power, a certain pressure begins to climb up Henry’s wrist, as though his veins are filling with tar. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it does feel foreign. Where the lines of his veins travel up his slim arm, they now appear dark black — void-like — against his pale skin. Henry presses his other hand to his wrist and rubs it. He cannot help but think of ink, although it does not rub away at Henry’s touch. Though the movement of the darkness is mildly uncomfortable, Henry sighs the moment the lines reach the bite marks in his hand. The ‘tar’ brings instant relief: the skin around the marks softens and the pain fades. His flesh is no longer fighting against itself.

Henry watches, horrified and relieved in equal measure, as a power from another world soothes his puncture wounds one by one. The wounds remain, partially healed from his own human body’s mechanisms, but the inflammation has faded. Henry slumps back into the pillows. His fatigue feels otherworldly, too, and Henry sinks into sleep without issue.

This time, Henry dreams.

Poll 

Image Description: A screenshot of a poll at the bottom of a Patreon post, with two options. Option One — Dream of Home. Option Two — Dream of Henry's home. Initializing... Polling... Eighty-eight percent, dream of home. Thirteen percent, dream of Henry's home. We have chosen to dream of home.

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Points of Articulation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is written and created by Hannah Semmelhack, with beta-reading by Fiona Clare.