“The many versions of this story”
I’ve been toying with this story in my head for years now. It was probably one of the earliest short story ideas that I wrote down. And it originally started as a hard sci-fi story with simulations and immortality machines, but once I finally decided to write it last year, the story changed a little bit in its scope and ending.
Since then, I’ve edited it two or three times and radically changed the ending each time. I still don’t know if I’m entirely happy with the ending, but I suppose it’s kind of fitting that a story like this would have so many different versions. It would be thematically appropriate, at least. So here’s one version, the most recent version, of the many versions of Peter Shewlin.
“The Many Worlds of Peter Shewlin,” by Andy Sima (2019)
Peter Shewlin awoke as if from a bad dream.
He found that he was in bed, just as he was every morning. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. He still felt that gaping space in his chest. But something seemed different, today. Maybe he had changed. But probably not.
He stared up at the crack in the ceiling, spilling out from the base of the wall all the way to the middle of the room, where it chipped off bits of paint to create some sort of ruined masterpiece. Underneath the beige surface that covered every wall, Peter could see other colors. Blues and reds from previous tenants. Previous people with previous lives, peering through a crack in his ceiling.
Peter glanced at the mirror at the edge of his room. A hand-me-down from his mother, the mirror was from the old home he had grown up in. The top-left corner was still chipped from where he had dropped it when he moved. He hadn’t been proud of that moment. He hadn’t been proud of many moments. The moving guy had only huffed and muttered something about how Peter should just pick the mirror back up.
He rolled over in bed, scratching at the itchy cuts on his back. They were still there from the running accident, still ached with the beginning of infection. That hadn’t changed. He was still contemplating whether to sue the kid that ran him off the road. Peter didn’t need the money, not really, but at least it would have been an interesting change in pace. Instead of going to that dreary old cell in the high rise downtown, working for a corporation he didn’t care for, Peter could go to court, make something for himself. That would be a change, right?
Throwing back the covers of his bed, Peter knew he was kidding himself. He’d never actually go through with it. No change, no difference. But what was he looking for, then? What was that itch at the back of his mind? Was it the odd aroma of the room? Peter smelled something. There was a touch of natural gas to it, but more than anything else it smelled the same as it always had.
Peter got up, out of his bed, and made his way into the kitchen of his apartment. He heaved in a great whiff of breath and became a little dizzy with anxiety for the day, the week, the month, the years to come. They’d be the same as every day, week, month, and year had been. But maybe there was something calming to that. A sense of belonging, at least to himself. But Peter didn’t think that much about it.
Peter decided to have a cigar before going to work. Rummaging through the cabinets in his kitchen, he came across an old humidor he had hidden from the landlord. Smoking wasn’t prohibited in the apartment, but there were cleaning fees. Best not to be chewed out just yet, he figured. Drawing a match from a different drawer, Peter struck it against the hard plaster of the wall. He had to get ready for work.
There was purpose in going to work, Peter told himself. But he couldn’t make himself believe it, no matter how hard he tried. He just didn’t care. But he also didn’t care enough to try to change anything about it. Something would eventually come along.
Something did come along. It was the natural gas he had smelt earlier; he had left the valve to the gas stove open last night, on purpose. A hazy memory of this floated up to Peter as he stared at the flame in his hand. He realized he’d never make it to work, and no one would notice. He smiled as the apartment promptly exploded.
Peter Shewlin was dead before he even realized what had happened. His landlord would find the body later, after the firemen had extinguished the blaze. The landlord would wonder why Peter had been smoking.
*****
Peter Shewlin awoke as if from a bad dream. He woke up feeling like he was on fire, which, although not a new experience, was still unpleasant.
But this quickly passed, and he found that he was in his shack, as he had always been upon awakening. Nothing was different. Life was as it was, there on that gentle plain outside of the great city of Athens. Today he would make a sacrifice to the gods, so at least there was that to look forward too.
Stepping through the door of his haphazard shack, he said good morning to his wife, children, and slave on his way out. He had to pick the best possible sheep to deliver to the temple of Zeus, up in the city. It was his civic duty, as the forum had decided. And he was proud of it. It gave him something to do.
It was not difficult to decide among the sheep, as he only had one. But it would all be worth it, as the gods would smile on him in return for his wondrous sacrifice. What a beautiful sheep. Only patchy on certain parts of its body, and only slightly deformed about its feet. A real prize specimen.
“Come on, little sheep,” he said, and began to poke at it with a stick he had found. “We have a big day ahead of us.”
The sheep bleated in response, oblivious to its impending doom. Its rectangular pupils dilated as it walked in front of Peter. Peter had always found its eyes rather unnerving. There was something about them that made him uncomfortable. As if he were being watched by a being far more intelligent than him. A being that might not like to be sacrificed to another god.
“Ridiculous,” Peter said to himself, and hit the sheep a little harder, just to prove that he was being worked up over nothing. The sheep gave a little call and rocked itself forward. Onward they walked, across the plains to the city.
Peter stopped at a crossroads, where he looked about him. He hadn’t been to this set of roads since he had buried his brother, after the war. A war for the gods, where the victors hadn’t won anything except presumed favor. But Peter shook his head. The gods were listening. They knew. He believed in them. But the harvests after the war had been worse than ever before. Peter’s infant son fell ill and died in his arms. The city was hit by a terrible storm. Peter knew the gods favored them as they favored all their followers. But Peter’s heart wasn’t in it.
Peter leaned against a scraggly pine at the side of the crossroads. He took out his water bladder and drank. He hadn’t walked that far, but he felt as if he had been dragged from the back of a chariot. His head ached, and his shoulders sagged. He couldn’t weaken now, for he had duties in Athens. It was his job to prepare the sacrifice for the priests of Zeus. It was all he had to do.
The sheep stared at him as Peter looked around for an answer. Peter turned to the skies and lifted his hands to the clouds, asking silently for assistance. He depended upon the gods, just as his city did. Peter waited for them to smile upon him, to grant him strength to carry out his task. He would take his sheep to the temple, and his purpose would be fulfilled, and he could rest easily. Then why, in the name of Zeus, did he feel so sick?
None of it mattered, in the end. At that moment, a stray bolt of lightning fell from the cloudless sky and struck both Peter and the tree. When they found Peter Shewlin’s fried body later, the priests declared it an act of the gods, an act of fate, though the gods said nothing. No one bothered to ask the sheep what it thought, and it wandered away from the scene of the crime, unnoticed.
*****
Peter Shewlin awoke as if from a bad dream. He was feeling electrified. And electrified seemed like a proper description, for one of the Ampian lightning storms had started up outside.
“It’s a good one today,” Mixamboola said, when they noted that Peter was awake. “A real proper thunder-bringer. Might even charge up the Eelian generator, too.”
“That would be a stroke of luck,” Peter said, stroking his chin with a feathery tentacle. “It’s been a while since the Maximums came by with their Refuel Rods. Don’t know how much longer we can last at this rate.”
“Indeed,” Mixamboola agreed. “The Sea Crockets will be struggling to breathe, sooner or later. And the gamgambibbidy won’t be doing any good, no.”
“You’re right,” Peter said. “It would certainly help if Fraxita city would lower the surplus rates, and maybe hand out some Flombulans, too.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Mixamboola said. “The current Maxi can’t even read a techni-text straight, let alone figure out how to fix the divide between us Tentaculars and the Dood-lah. It’s so removed, that Maxi, that it might not even understand what a Sea Crocket is, anyway. I guarantee you it doesn’t eat any. Probably dines exclusively on Gug juice. Rich wibblewobble, that one.”
“Mmhmm,” Peter said, shaking his head in disgust. He sighed and looked out the window at the droves of serpentine liquids falling from the sky.
They had a long day ahead of them, Mixamboola and Peter. They had to go out into that Ampian storm, get the Eelian generator’s Lightning Tentacle set up, and make sure that their harvest of Craxils hadn’t spoiled yet. If they had, the Maximums would have their hides. Only the richest could afford fresh Craxil, but it was those richest that also had power enough to grant the Maximums a death warrant.
In truth, Peter understood it all perfectly. The politics and syntax came to him as naturally as ventilating his skin. At least that was what he told himself as he read pamphlet after pamphlet from the city library. Peter wasn’t born here, and he didn’t want to die here, but his duty to the Maximums came before all else. He had to excel in all things, for their sake. And if he didn’t do that, well, then what did he have but a house and a gamgambibbidy?
Peter stepped outside of their Crasta house with Mixamboola into the serpentine liquid storm around them.
“Can you go check on the gamgambibbidy?” Mixamboola asked Peter.
“Can do,” Peter responded. And wading through the sea of sand that surrounded their house, Peter made his way towards the gamgambibbidy ranch. He was careful not to disturb the sand too much, for that might trigger an attack by the H’lud. Peter feared, but he knew fear would kill his mind. It didn’t really make a difference what Peter feared or didn’t fear because the Maximums never asked.
Reaching the special Fencial Barrier that kept the gamgambibbidy enclosed, Peter stepped through and shielded his eyes against the Ampian lightning storm’s intermittent bursts. He was having a hard time spotting his gamgambibbidy, which shouldn’t have been a problem, considering the gamgambibbidy species are twenty feet tall and resemble horses, but only if horses were yellow and had been through some sort of awkward adolescent growth spurt that they never bothered fixed.
Peter made a clicking noise with his tongues, the one he had trained the gamgambibbidy to respond to. And eventually, out of the sand rose the great gamgambibbidy, in all its horse-like glory. Peter wasn’t sure what a horse was.
“Alright, buddy, it’s milking time,” and Peter clicked his tongues again. The creature responded and knelt next to Peter so that he could reach the pustules on its neck. He squeezed, and the gas that the gamgambibbidy naturally produced began to pour into the air around Peter. It was a sweet smell, a relaxing smell, and necessary to the health of the Maximums.
Peter considered what he was doing. He loved the gamgambibbidy almost as much as he loved the Maximums. But why were these creatures so integral, anyway? Where had they come from? Why were they here? Evolutionarily, it was convoluted and, Peter decided, kind of arbitrary. Peter wasn’t being paid to ask questions. He was being paid to work. But still the questions crept in, try as he might. They didn’t make his life easier, he knew that.
But Peter’s questions ended there as he absentmindedly squeezed the gamgambibbidy’s neck a little too hard. The massive beast, reeling back in horror, kicked out its long leg and sent Peter flying into the Fencial barrier. The impact not only knocked the wind from him but broke his several spines. Unsurprisingly, Peter Shewlin was dead.
“Dang,” Mixamboola said when he came running to the commotion. “Ain’t that a shame.”
*****
Peter Shewlin awoke- oh, no, he didn’t, because he died of a massive heart attack in his sleep. He was dead before he even realized he was living, which as far as Peter was concerned, was nothing new.
*****
Peter Shewlin awoke as if from a bad dream. He felt like he had been stabbed, and his back was killing him. Peter didn’t know why he was in pain, but it probably didn’t help that he was flying down the interstate in a red convertible at one hundred miles per hour while high on pure cocaine.
“Where am I?” he slurred, struggling to maintain his upright position. No, this wasn’t cocaine, he realized. This was something else. Or maybe a combination. Peter couldn’t remember anything since the hotel that morning, out in Los Angeles. At least he wasn’t driving, because way dead ahead was a massive truck, hauling some unfathomable good to God-knows-where. Peter would have crashed into it if he had been at the wheel.
“We’re going to Las Vegas,” the man driving the car said. Who was this man, sitting next to him? Peter wasn’t sure. Probably somebody he picked up in LA. Hopefully with more drugs. “You paid me to drive you to the Flamingo. So that’s where we’re going.”
“Right, the Flamingo,” Peter said. “I’m filming there.” A thought struck him, though. He didn’t have any money, so how had he paid this man? But as he looked more closely at the individual seated next to him, the telltale white wisps of powder under his nose began to give away certain details.
Oh God, Peter thought to himself. A spasm came over him, and he gripped his seat. This had to be a trip of some kind. Surely, he hadn’t traded a man drugs to drive him to Las Vegas. This was too surreal. Like something out of a book. But still, Peter smiled hollowly.
“Don’t worry, man,” the driver said. “I’m your friend. I’m totally fine to drive.” Even as he said that, the truck in front of them was growing closer and closer.
“How did I meet you, exactly?” Peter said, rubbing his eyes and trying to block out the blinding sun. Visions darted in and out from the edges of his sight, like storms at the edge of a field, or wolves at the edge of a herd of sheep. Overhead, a plane roared by. To Peter, it sounded deafening.
“You stumbled out of your hotel room at about nine in the morning,” he said to Peter, “with spaghetti tied around your forehead, like a daisy chain. I saw you and said to myself, ‘Here’s a man who knows what he’s doing.’ So, I struck up a conversation, and you told me you had no car to get to Vegas with. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t offer you a ride?”
“That seems likely,” Peter said. It did, in fact, seem like something he would do. Like that party in Chicago, where his car ended up at the bottom of Lake Michigan, or the swing club out in Denver that served those delicious mimosas and had a back room filled with taxidermized dogs. Peter had seen his share. Usually while high. Most of it he would forget the next day, and he would wake up empty. But the drugs would fill that.
“You see that truck?” Peter said.
“I see it alright,” the man driving the car said. “Think we can drive over it?”
Peter stiffened back in his seat. “What are you saying?”
The man laughed. “You really are out of your head,” he said. And he put his foot to the floor and the red convertible lurched forward.
“What are you doing?” Peter screamed with glee and terror as the truck on the horizon grew exponentially larger.
“Passing,” the man said. And he leaned forward, as if he could shove the car ahead with his very body and aimed for the rear of the truck.
Oh God, Peter thought again. Here it comes. This is finally how it ends. Peter shut his eyes and prepared for the worst.
There was a whoosh of air and the sound of tearing metal, and a high-pitched laughter.
When Peter opened his eyes, gasping for air, he found that he wasn’t dead. Instead, he was still in the car, driving through the desert, and the truck was now slowly losing pace behind them.
“What the hell was that?” Peter said.
“You should have seen your goddamn face,” the driver chortled. “You looked like you just about died.”
“But that metal,” Peter said.
“Sideswiped the truck, that’s all,” the driver said. “Nothing I can’t buff out.”
Peter relaxed and wiped his forehead. “Whoo. I’m about to sweat out everything I took.” To be sure that he wouldn’t he took another snort from the vial in his pocket.
Peter, of course, should have known by now he wouldn’t be so lucky. He had danced with a cruel mistress all his life, in the hopes that he might win her favor. But in the end, she only collected her due and left Peter with a powdered nose and sickly smile. He began to twitch and felt sick to his stomach. How much time had passed? Peter didn’t know. It didn’t really matter. Even if he were to survive this overdose, he wouldn’t remember anyway. Peter sighed and gave in to the drugs.
The man next to him chuckled as Peter died. The driver didn’t realize what was happening, and slowly the life fled from Peter, as it had so many times before. No one would ask the driver what had happened. No one really cared.
*****
Peter Shewlin awoke as if from a bad dream. A terrible dream, really. Strung out on drugs in the desert and being exploded from the inside out. Quite frightening, really.
But Peter began to think more about his dream. It had been so vivid, so real. How did he know that it wasn’t real, to someone, somewhere? Another place, another time, another Peter. Maybe. Or maybe it was him. The same Peter, just somewhere else.
He’d had so many of these vivid dreams, and each one ended the same way, in his death. Blown up in his own apartment on the way to work. Slain at the hand of his own sword Demon Slayer, the sword that slays demons. Crushed underneath the broken jet engine of a plane. Shot by an escaping criminal on his very last trip down the beat. Drowning in the rain he had created. Killed by the only thing that had kept him going.
Peter shook his head and got ready for work. Maybe it would be different today. Peter knew he had to be the one to make that choice. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to or not.
Throwing the covers off of his bed, Peter got up and went to the closet where he kept all his clothes for work. Same clothes, every day. Same job, every day. Same Peter, every day. Wasn’t it?
Peter got into his clothes and looked at the small seedlings he kept in pots on his windowsill. They were tiny plants, just barely sprouted now, but they would grow and be strong with enough sunlight and water. Each pot had a different handful of seeds, and each pot looked different. Peter had collected them over the years from the kind of people who gave plants as housewarming gifts. The plants, as much as those who had given them to Peter, were his friends.
Grabbing a misting bottle from the bathroom, he began to water the plants, and went from pot to pot. One pot was made of earthy terracotta, like a clay heart, and it stood strong. One container was made out of old piping but helpfully covered in wax to keep the heavy metals from leeching into the soil. One was made of ceramic and in the shape of a sword, maybe from some fantasy game. One pot was a plastic bowl, normally made for cereal of pasta, but how holding soil. Peter had made that one himself, when he had no other pots left. Another seemed to be coated in gold. Gilded, as the person who gave it to him had said. But it held plants all the same.
The sprouts grew out of the pots. Some would grow into flowers, which Peter might cut and gift to his friends at work. Or they might become herbs, which he would eat with his dinner when they were ripe. Or they would become something foul-smelling and illegal in most states, which Peter was always surprised by. He never intended for them to grow that way, but they still did. Or perhaps they’d grow into nothing at all. They’d just be sad and lifeless, needing to be cleared away by a more careful hand.
It was Peter who had grown them, though. He was the common denominator of this apartment gardening experiment. Tiny worlds, tiny lives, grown by the same hand. Plants were plants were plants, as his mother had told him once. There was a use for everything, it was just up to him to figure it out. Peter didn’t really know what it had to do with anything.
Some days, Peter decided not to water the plants. But this morning felt different. He wanted to do something right for once. That terrible dream had given him a little kick in the plants, so to speak, and he needed to act on it. Smiling grimly, Peter took the spray bottle and wetted the plants and their soil. After he had finished, he fixed his hair and went to the kitchen.
Many different plants could sprout from one set of seeds, Peter mused as he drank his morning coffee and stared absently at the newspaper. It was a grab bag. Each was just as much alive as any other one. But he had to be the one to plant them and find out.
Of course, that wasn’t necessarily true. Some seeds are duds. They aren’t granted the same chances as other seeds, and are quickly eaten and digested, burned and rotted, or thrown away wholesale. Peter had learned this often enough. As much as the seeds were his to plant, they didn’t always grow like he wanted them to.
As he sat at the table in his apartment, Peter began to sweat, and realized with a start that the room was slowly filling with smoke. He was fairly certain that his room wasn’t supposed to be full of smoke, and jumped up in a panic. He jammed his fingers onto his phone and called the emergency services, but they were busy. So Peter did the next best thing and ran out of his apartment as fast as he could.
Flying down the stairs, the smoke got thicker and the flames got hotter as he descended, but his path out was still clear. Bursting from the front door of his apartment building, Peter found himself clustered on the street with the other building tenants. Some were stuck in bathrooms, shivering in the morning dew. Others held screaming children or carried heavy leather briefcases and gold watches. Peter stared at them and realized he’d never met any of them before.
Once the firemen had put the blaze out the landlord had arrived on the scene, they informed Peter and the rest of the people in the building that a man had been hoarding books, and they’d caught on fire, trapping him in his apartment. The landlord swore aloud and wondered why the man had so many damn books. But Peter understood well why one might have all those books. Collect worlds as one might collect plants or drugs or money or fame or progress.
The man with all the books had died in the fire, and a great deal of the apartment had been damaged, but other than that, it all seemed fine to Peter. He scratched at his chin and had an odd sense of déjà vu, as if he were waking up from a dream. But he was already awake, and he had much work yet to do. One day he’d get caught in that fire, he knew. But maybe not today. And that much, Peter knew, was all he had left.
