before she…a month or so later after arriving in this universe… kind of like this… (minus)
Lets say it was the at the end of the sixth week or perhaps the sixth month or even a year after their arrival, on a hot summers evening, Kim-Park-Seo, also known as Park and in another country as Nomiko and her partner Sam, with her perfect southern english, is in a sleeveless summer dress that only served to emphasize the tattoos that ran up are arms and round her body, walked across the perfect grass lawn with Sam who was wearing a loose linen suit and carrying a brown leather bag that contains; a cardigan, kelvar vests and a gun or two. What did she say to the crimina, who the universe needed to not breed with his enslaved woman, who the world calls his wife. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, when a woman arrives with her partner to see you, before you return home and fly away. In another part of the event another woman is speaking gently to the criminal’s slave, his wife, before beginning the process of escorting her to safety. (You need to stay here because his masters will probably kill him and if you go with him you could also be a victim…) She stayed. Others watched, others waited. Glasses clinked. People spoke. People listened. Some people standing in a small group are watching her walk across the lawn, stand beside him and wished they were not there.
Occasionally, she says to him or perhaps its really to herself, I used to smoke back in the days when I thought I might die, could die at any time. Unlike now when the threats are more complex and differently present. They are standing on the edge of the patio, in front of them are steps lead down onto the grass in the formal garden. The garden is lit by the houselights, and a string of light bulbs running along the garden walls and the popup bar at the far end of the lawn. The smoker is an American puffing on his cigerette. The end of the cigerette is an incandescent dot glowing red in the dark. It looks to her as if its a red targeting dot resting on his face, a perfect target. She feels quite nostalgic at the thought. I hear you are leaving the country and going back to the USA tomorrow? Half a question, half an existential threat. He turns and looks at the tall woman of uncertain age standing next to him in a dark coloured sleeveless dress, he doesn’t know the tattoos have meaning and even if he did he wouldn’t know how to interpret them. That’s true, I have been recalled home, my work here is done so its back to head office. My replacement is over their somewhere, he says gesturing towards the small group mentioned before[…] The American is luxuriating in his cigerette with its smoldering point which serves as a perfect target, as he looks at her, conscious that her face is unusually bleak, not aware that he is standing next to a fate as certain as an unstoppable bullet from a rifle or a handgun — though perhaps it will look like a pure accident, a meteor falling from space, a building collapse in an earthquake in California or Greece, perhaps a mass shooting in Falls Church where unusually the murderer is not identified and is neither insane nor a terrorist, or a sex worker arriving from the spectacle who will deliver a rare sexually transmitted disease in his office tomorrow morning before he leaves for the airport that will kill him in a few months time, or perhaps it will be a wasp stinging his driver which causes an accident on the E556 as he travels in Virginia. Last time, she thinks, I put a few 9mm bullets in your head and vanished you, burying your body on a hill in Hertfordshire but I don’t own the hill here, yet, and cannot plant the infant oak tree over your dead body as I did last time. And sighs with regret. Whatever he will not know the cause of his death. He flicks the cigerette butt out into the dark, a glowing trail that arcs through the air, is not merely a dot but the yellow red arc that that erases the dot, a line across the landscape, an empty trail that has no target, the arc itself being the purpose. Lucretius would be pleased, she thinks. It lands in a flower bed in a small explosion of sparks. And you, he asks, what are you here for? She refuses the cigarette he offers. An aspiration seeking a target, a desire that should be refused. I imagine it would be nice to be a good person, she says pausing before continuing; my partner is being introduced to Martyn, don’t know why. She can hear Mathew Shipps fingers tracing a line of sound like the muted quiver of angels wings, á piano line plays in her head. He’s my replacement. The man said. Ah really, we missed dealing with one another by a few days then. Who are you? He asks her. I work for the universe. She says bleakly. The universe? Yes I am an agent for the universe, or is that multiverse? not really sure, i am probably less destructive than an asteroid or comet […] And then she smiles at him. A while ago my brother and his wife were hurt, what’s a woman going to do when she identifies the people who did this, and the management figures who thought this was a good idea? And the universe doesn’t care. Nothing at all, she sighs, I’m not allowed to it turns out. After all a woman has to protect her husband. So since your leaving and i know what you do, and as you are politically immune I thought I’d ask why? He looks at her, understanding dawning, it’s getting darker but it feels like dawn to him, should I answer? So your his sister. Why not I’m leaving tomorrow. It was ages ago when this really started, it was about money, we were expanding into the area he operated in, he was the softest target, and its my government’s policy. So it was an imperial takeover, drugs, money, people, eventually the hedge fund. My brother wanted to become major, to escape from his violent history. He thought that was possible. (I’m like a piano player, standing with a man who is tossing his burning cigarettes into the night thinking he is safe, she thinks.) Mostly people are harmless, we threaten them and they either do what we say or… he says, thinking he will probably have to send people. He never does of course. […] Flicking his lighter, inhaling smoke. He watches her nod. I wondered what it was, thank you for telling me, just business, politics, power. I thought it might be personal. It was a long time ago. Harmless, yes I suppose it is true that people are. That’s very good. So that was it. My brother and his wife are going back to Tokyo. My brother, she says, tells me to stop because I will be killed if I say unnecessary things. But you see, even in this universe it seems my brother is kinder and nicer than I am. Most people are. I work for the universe. I think the universe needs us to live the lives we already lived again. We are documenting the differences and repetitions. She pauses. The governments want you alive. You’ll be safe when you get back home. [she doesn’t say to him — Though the council, my brother will probably send people to kill you. Not our responsibility in the USA…] If I was you I would keep running and hide out in Idaho or Alberta. (she doesn’t say you will live a few weeks longer that way, though she thinks it.) She takes the lighter from his fingers using a gesture that she had learnt as a teenager in a dojo in South Shinguko. She looks at the lighter, then at him, it’s a long time since i did that. He wants to step forward but finds himself stepping backwards. (if you don’t go, she thinks, i will see you in a few days. Or does she say that aloud. Enjoying the threat. Does he see that in her face? ) I’m getting married in a few days time, it turns out we need to get married in this universe for the same reasons we did in the other one, it makes people feel secure, imagine that. She says to him, as for me I am going home now to make carrot cake, send the babysitter home, drink some Belvedere with him and talk about life. All this in the spacetime of a man smoking two cigarettes. Who was that woman? he asks his secretary. They stand together watching her glide across the lawn. The secretary isn’t sure her feet are touching the ground.
Park leaves him standing there and is marveling at her constraint. I am so old, sixty years old in a thirty year old body, she thinks. She is walking towards her tall european man who has the brown leather bag hanging across his body, he is standing talking to Martyn, who is the American’s replacement, the American Ambassador, Fergus and the Minister. We should go she says to him. She has been spoken to, she will be safe now. She takes a glass from a passing waiter’s tray. Stops him. Puts the glass back on the tray. We’ll be going now. As they walk away, waiting and bar staff, and some of the security people start leaving. As they walked through the building she said to him, I don’t get to kill him in this universe. He says, It’s a deterministic universe and this is one of the things that is as inevitable as gravity. I know it’s the price of safety, still I wanted to say “Have a good trip, capitalist zombie.” But I didn’t. We’ll need more fertilizer for the oak tree, he says. The sounds of a happy man walking across a car park to a car with his partner, his wife. The multiverse is pleased when the american dies shortly after arriving home in the USA, precisely who killed him doesn’t matter. Another universal crisis avoided. Perhaps it has other things it wants them to do… Why did they choose to save the criminal’s wife?
(Perhaps we should mention that there is also the question of a future descendent who wanted to rescue her from her life of enslavement so that later she would find a nice husband (fully vetted by our heroine)with whom she would have a daughter and this daughter would have a son who in turn would have another child who would in turn unnecessarily try to rescue this woman and find that she had already been rescued by them. This person from the future would have helped the woman stay behind in London, with a barely perceptible use of force, which was unnecessary […] But this is not why they chose to save her, in actuality it was just that they could. )
