If you love science fiction, then you are probably familiar with the idea of parallel universes. If you're not, here's the short version - Imagine yourself standing in front of a crossroad. You have a decision to make. Every road that you can take from that crossroad is a different choice you can choose to follow. When you make that choice and walk down one of those roads, you can only go forward, you can't go back and change your mind. Therefore, you will never know what might have happened if you took a different road. The parallel universes theory claims that you did take those other roads, and that every road that you took exists in a different world, a world where your life turned out differently from how you are living now...because you took this other road. And while we are living our lives in this universe, an unlimited number of other universes exist in parallel existence to our universe. Well, I do believe that I managed to confuse myself, so I'll just leave it at that.

comments are more than welcomed (good and bad) – [email protected]

CHOICES OF LIFE

by Osnat

Blair sat on his bed, staring at the badge that he held in his hands; the badge that in that moment represented everything in his life. It meant that Jim really wanted him as his partner and friend; it meant that Simon and all the guys at the station saw him as one of them, and not as an outsider as he sometimes felt when he first started to work at the station with Jim. It also meant that his life, the life that he had lived for the past 30 years, would never be the same.

Since he could remember himself, he loved to learn about other cultures. The day that he found out about his acceptance to Anthropology studies was one of the happiest in his life. Now, he had lost all of that. He was thrown out of Rainier, his name stained for the rest of his life among the academic societies; he would never be able to take part in any academic life.

He had lost all that in order to save Jim and keep his secret.

Yes, he did feel responsible for Jim’s senses; after all, he was the one who taught him what they were, how to control and use them. And yes, he was also the reason for Jim’s secret being exposed to the public. Still, giving up his way of life in order to give Jim his back, it was the hardest thing he had ever done.

Was it worth it ?

Blair threw the badge on the bed, put his head in his hands and sighed. Jim was his best friend, and Blair would give up his life for him without thinking twice; but he couldn’t help but wonder. “Maybe it would have been better for all of us if I hadn't met Jim.” For a minute, he was startled, thinking that Jim might have heard the statement that came out of his mouth. But then he remembered that Jim was on a stakeout, and he let himself be pulled back into the depression that encircled him.

“Does your heart tell you that it would have been better if you and your sentinel did not meet?”

Blair jumped from his bed, startled. He looked at the doors of his room, and gasped. “Incacha, how... what...?”

Incacha stood there, smiling at him. “My spirit will never leave the sentinel and his shaman.”

“Is Jim okay; does he need my help?” Blair asked, all the worse scenarios flashing in front of his eyes; Jim hurt, calling for his help; having a zone out and can’t even call for him.

“I am not here for the sentinel; I am here for the shaman. He is the one who needs my guidance,” Incacha replied. “You have not answered my question; is that what your heart tells you?”

Blair started pacing in his small room. “I don’t know anymore. I know how much it helped Jim, having me as his guide; and I know that I learned a lot from working and living with him. He has become my best friend and my family. But I can’t help thinking that both of our lives, especially mine, would have been better if each of us went his own way; if we didn't meet.” Blair closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to calm himself. It pained him to voice those thoughts, making him feel as if he was betraying Jim; but he had to say it, and not just because Incacha had asked him. He had to do it because he knew that he had to face those feelings, that he could not go on with his life without facing those doubts first.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his room. He had no idea how he got there, but he was standing in Rainier in what looked like the early morning hours; Incacha still by his side. The premises looked deserted, although Blair was sure that he heard voices from somewhere near them. “What are we doing here?” he asked, looking at Incacha in confusion. He was about to ask him about the way that they got there, when a speeding car came to a halt next to them and Blair looked in astonishment at Simon as he got out of it.

“Simon, what are you doing here?” he asked him. “And what’s with the moustache?”

Simon didn’t answer him. In fact, he looked as if he wasn’t even aware to Blair’s presence next to him. He shut the door of the car and turned towards the nearest building, almost bumping into Blair while making his way to it.

“Captain?” Blair asked again, confused. When he once again didn’t get any recognition from the tall man, he followed him.

When they reached the entrance Blair noticed for the first time the big crowd that was gathered near the fountain; the fountain itself closed by crime scene tapes. Simon made his way through the crowd of people and joined Rafe and Megan who were standing in the middle of the crime scene, a covered body lying on the ground beside them.

Standing by Simon, Rafe and Megan, a chill ran down Blair's spine and he swallowed hard; the scene too familiar to him. “They can’t see me, can they?”

“No,” came the expected answer from Incacha who stood behind him.

As if drawn to the scene in front of him, Blair stood paralyzed in his place and watched as Simon knelt down by the body and lifted the blanket that covered it. When the body was finally revealed, Blair gasped and took a step back, trying to control the nausea and panic that threatened to overcome him. He could feel his heart racing, his hands starting to sweat. “What happened?” he managed to ask, his gaze still on the body.

“The evil sentinel took your life, and your sentinel wasn’t there to save you,” Incacha answered calmly.

Blair wanted to scream; to tell Simon and the rest that he was right there; that all they had to do was call Jim and he would fix it, he would save him. But where was Jim?

All Blair could do was watch.

“We ID’ed him as Blair Sandburg. Some students told us that he was a doctorate candidate in the Anthropology department here at Rainier; he was also a teaching assistant at that program,” Rafe informed Simon.

“Do we have any suspects?” Simon asked, still looking at the body.

“One, sir.” It was Megan’s turn to update the captain. She opened her notebook and read from the writing, “Alex Barnes. A student told us that Mr. Sandburg worked with her on his thesis. We’re checking on her but we haven’t found anything suspicious so far. Maybe we’ll find something in his office.”

“They’re talking about me lithey don’t even know me,” Blair said, still finding it hard to believe what his eyes were showing him.

“They don’t know you,” he heard Incacha’s voice. “In this reality, your path did not cross the one of your sentinel in the same way that led to your friendship in the reality that you know as your own.”

Blair turned to Incacha, surprised. “You mean that we did meet? I met Jim but didn’t become his guide? Why not? Didn’t he want my help?”

“You never knew about the sentinel. You met only the cop.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t Jim a sentinel in this reality?” Blair couldn’t understand what Incacha meant by his words. Is it really possible that he met Jim and didn’t sense that something was different in him ?

But Incacha said nothing; he just stared back at Blair, the same calm smile on his face.

Frustrated, Blair turned to look at Simon and the rest of the cops. They were doing all the official things that were always done when a body was discovered. He knew those procedures by heart, had seen them being done on more than a few dozen bodies over the past three years. However, he found it hard to watch these things being done on his murder, on his body. He could never understand how they could investigate a murder in the mechanical way that they did. Jim had told him a few times that he has to detach himself emotionally when he’s involved in a murder investigation, but he was never able to do that. He always looked at Jim and the other cops when they investigated the murder of a fellow police officer, or a friend, and saw then how hard it was for them. Somewhere in his mind, Blair sometimes thought about how would it be if Jim and the guys at the station were forced to investigate his own death. Somehow this wasn’t the way that he had pictured it. When he looked at Simon and the others, all he could see was a regular, emotionally detached investigation, as if he were no more than just another murder case; And it hurt to see that.

“I know this kid.”

Simon’s words drew Blair’s attention away from his own thoughts and back to the fountain. “How could he know me? I thought you said I didn’t work with Jim. How could Simon know me otherwise?” The questions were directed to Incacha, but Blair did not turn to him when he asked them; his attention was fixed on the body in front of him, and Simon who was still knelt beside it, looking.

Simon’s statement also drew Rafe and Megan’s attention. “From where, sir?”

“He was one of the hostages in the elevator incident we had two years ago.”

“I remember that,” Rafe said, looking at the body more closely. “Was he really there?”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s him. Who can forget him? He helped us a lot then, with controlling the people in the elevator and with the bomb.” Simon covered the body again. “Poor kid; he didn’t deserve to end like that. He was a good kid.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” Rafe suddenly said. “Jim called him a neo-hippie.” A smile made it's way to Rafe’s face when he said that. “I remember that he really liked the kid. He was really impressed by him; said he knew how to act in time of trouble.”

Blair smiled sadly when he heard Rafe’s words. “Jim really said those things about me; without even knowing me?”

“Who’s Jim?” Megan asked.

Simon straightened up. “I’m going to the station. Keep me updated,” he said and turned to walk back in the direction he came from, the direction of his car.

Blair noticed the sadness in Simon’s voice and his wired behavior, and his mind started racing. ‘Where’s Jim? Why doesn’t Megan know him? Is he dead?’

“Was it something I said?” Megan asked Rafe, confused.

“It’s not you.” Rafe sadly smiled. “Jim was the best detective I ever worked with. He was the pride of the department; taught me everything I had to know when I first came to the station.”

“Was he killed?” Blair held his breath when he heard Megan’s question, afraid of the answer.

“No, but maybe it would have been better for him if he had died, instead of being in the condition that he is in.” Rafe moved closer to Megan, obviously not wanting the rest of the police officers who were near them to hear their conversation. “About three years ago, something changed in him. He started acting weird, saying he could hear things that no one heard, having terrible headaches; they were so strong that one time he actually fainted in the middle of the Bull Pen. We all urged him to get medical treatment, and he did go to see a doctor. He said that they couldn’t find anything.” Rafe paused, looking around again, making sure no one was listening. Then he continued, “it actually cooled down for a while, and we were all sure that whatever it was that caused those things, was gone.” Rafe lowered his voice. “But then, after a short time, about two years ago, he went crazy all of a sudden. The headaches started again, worse this time, and he kept telling us that he could see and hear things that weren’t there, talking about some jaguar that’s following him. We all tried to help him, but he just stopped coming to the station and disconnected himself from the world. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t help him. The captain took it very hard since they were good friends. I think that Simon still tries to contact him every once in a while. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what’s going on with him now. I know that he doesn’t live in his old loft, but Simon isn’t willing to talk about it and we gave up on getting any answers from him.”

“And you have no idea what caused his behavior?” Megan asked, curious.

“No, no idea...”

Blair wasn’t listening any more to what Rafe was saying. He turned to Incacha. “I want to see Jim!”

As fast as in a blink of an eye, Blair was no longer near the fountain. Instead, he stood in a middle of a dark room that he couldn’t recognize. The room was empty except for a bed that stood in one of the room’s corners and when Blair’s eyes got used to the darkness of the room, he saw that there was someone lying on the bed. “Jim?” Blair asked quietly, taking a few steps closer to the bed.

“Jim?” he asked again, standing by the bed.

The person in the bed turned around and Blair held his breath when he saw the man’s face. “Jim,” he whispered. Kneeling down beside the bed, he looked at his best friend.

Jim was lying on the bed, unshaved, his hair a mess and dressed in white clothes. But non of these things were the reason for the pain that Blair felt in his heart; the cause for that pain was the look that he saw in Jim’s eyes. In the blue eyes that usually held a serious but warm and often teasing look, Blair could only see hunted and frightened feelings.

“What happened to him?” Blair asked Incacha, his eyes never leaving Jim.

“He didn’t have his guide,” Incacha said. “When the paths of the sentinel and his guide crossed each other in this life, they weren’t able to recognize each other as more than just regular people. So the sentinel was left with no guidance. At first, he managed to control his senses by suppressing them; but when the time to choose came, and his senses grew stronger, he was not able to ignore them any longer. He was sure that he was going out of his mind, so he secluded himself from the world, including the friends that might have been able to help him. In the end there was no other way and his friend hospitalized him in this institute for people who lost their mind. I guess that in some way he did lose his mind and his way. He is no longer a sentinel, but he will never be a regular man. He is stuck between the two worlds.”

Blair could only watch as his best friend, his sentinel, looked around himself, hearing things that he could not see, things that happened far from his sight but not far enough to escape his heightened hearing. Suddenly, sun light from the cracks in the closed blinds reached Jim’s eyes. The scream that escaped him caused Blair to fall back and he watched as Jim jumped up from the bed and ran to the far corner of the room, where he pushed himself against the wall and slowly slipped to the floor, sitting with his knees up to his chest, his arms around them.

After managing to get his balance back, Blair got up, making his way to the corner. He knelt beside Jim, watching him sittingin the corner like a little kid, head resting on his knees. He put out his hand to touch Jim, but drew it back when he realized that he couldn’t do that; that he couldn’t let him know that he was there. He wanted to tell Jim that everything will be okay and that he would help him, but he couldn't. So he just sat beside him.

After a few minutes, Blair got up and turned to Incacha, tears in his eyes. “Take me back. I’ve seen enough.”

“Why do you want to go back to a life that you’re not happy living?” Incacha asked. “You can stay in this reality, now that the Blair of it is no longer alive.”

“How can you offer that?” Blair almost screamed. “Look at him!” He turned and looked at Jim. “Do you really think that I can leave him like that? This isn’t the life that he deserves to live! This isn’t the life that he is destined to live.”

“So you sacrifice your life for the life of your sentinel?”

Blair looked at Incacha, pain and anger filling his eyes. “Jim isn’t just my sentinel, he is my best friend, and that is what comes first. If I’ll ever be forced to sacrifice my life for him, I would. But this isn’t the case here. I thought that both of our lives would have been better if we didn't meet; but now I know I was wrong.” He turned and looked at Jim again. “He needs me; more than I knew, probably more than he will ever know. And I won’t let him down.” He took a deep breath, turning back to Incacha. “Please, take me back,” he begged, closing his eyes. He swallowed hard, waiting to hear what Incacha had to say.

When he opened his eyes a few seconds later, he was back in his room at the loft that he knew and had grown to call home. He could still hear Incacha’s words echoing in his head, “Do not abandon your sentinel, and he will not abandon you.”

“I won’t,” he whispered, promising both Incacha and himself. Hearing the front door being opened at the same moment, he got out of his room in time to see Jim closing the door and tossing the keys on the table. Blair smiled at him.

When Jim turned he saw Blair standing in the middle of the loft, with a big smile on his face. “Is everything okay here, chief? You have that smile on your face. ”

“And what smile would that be?” Blair asked, still smiling.

“The one that says ‘I know something that you don't’.”

“You have nothing to worry about, Jim. Everything is okay,” Blair answered him, trying to control his wide smile. “Just the way that it should be.” Going to the kitchen he took two bottles of beer out of the fridge and offered one to Jim. “So, how was the stakeout?”

THE END