“You’ll never really know,” he replied. “Fate and destiny aren’t things I think about or put stock in. I’m of the belief that things happen the way they do because people make them happen that way. Whether or not you were meant to die on your twenty-fifth birthday... All I can say is that it is the day after your birthday and you’re still here. Does it matter if I had a hand in it or not?”
She considered his words, trying on his idea that things happened because of people, not because of fate or destiny, or whatever else people believe in. She generally believed in what she could see, and especially that which was rational. Fate and destiny didn’t meet her criteria. The more she thought about it the more she realized she was a product of action, rather than of fate. She acted out on taking her life and he acted out on stopping her. Whatever happened to her next would be her responsibility, and it gave her a sense of purpose to know that she may have more control over her life than fate, destiny, or anything else.
“For what it’s worth, Zoe, I hope you decide not to try again. You should live long enough to realize you have more to give to this world than just your life.”
She breathed in deeply, feeling the need to fill her lungs with more oxygen than necessary. It was the second time he’d told her something that no one else ever had. In her experience people were mainly out for themselves, which made his rescue all the rarer. If there were Good Samaritans in the world she had never met one. Not until Evan.
“Is everyone like you where you’re from?” she asked.
His face stretched out, surprise registering in his face from her question. “Where I’m from?” he asked, emphasizing the word.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only person in the world who can travel thousands of miles in the blink of an eye,” she retorted. “So you must not be from here.”
“Hmm.” His attention caught on something random in the room and he stared after it. Whatever he was thinking about must have been gnawing at him from the inside; she’d never seen anyone so pensive. She doubted most people took the time to think anyway. “You did promise you would tell me,” she reminded him, interrupting whatever internal conversation he was having with himself.
“I did,” he agreed. “Fundamentally people are the same no matter where you go. Where I’m from is no exception.”
“And where is that?” Finally! She was going to find out the truth.
He took a slow, deep breath. “You have to understand that what I’m about to tell you will sound bizarre and impossible to you, while for me it is just an aspect of my life,” he started. “Where I’m from we’ve advanced in science and technology far beyond what you have here. Our laws of nature are different, both in how they work and how we understand them. That’s why I can do things here that seem superhuman, for lack of a better word.”
A voice from within her, whether it was her heart or her head, told her to show him the door and call the police. Maybe she really was dead and stuck in some kind of limbo existence as punishment for not believing in God or donating to the bell ringers standing outside the mall at Christmas. She didn’t believe in an afterlife any more than she believed in God. She believed in what she could see in front of her and what could be proven. Evan may have been saying things any rational person would deem improbable, but he articulated them with such conviction that he couldn’t be lying unless he was psychologically unhinged. He appeared to be perfectly normal, and spoke in a manner which convinced her he was perfectly normal.
There was also the fact that he had proven the improbable to her. He couldn’t have faked Santa Ynez, Paris, Greece and every other country he took her to, therefore it must have been real. She knew that the simplest explanation was often the truest, and that if she considered the impossible to be possible, the impossible could exist.
Her eyes wandered to a large built-in bookshelf across the room and scanned a row for one book in particular. The spine was thick and colorful, a blue background littered with spots and stars that continued from the front cover and over to the back. It was an expensive purchase from the California Science Center years earlier. After watching a particularly fascinating IMAX movie about the planet Earth, she became so enamored with the cosmos that she bought the book and read it cover-to-cover, mostly just staring at the carefully rendered images and reading their corresponding captions for hours at a time.
“You’re from an alternate universe, aren’t you?” If the impossible were possible, then it was a rational explanation.