Page 85 of Under Story

“Say we stay here, and we find the other Silas,” Laurel says. “What then? We don’t want him to keep getting younger.”

“The rest of the plan would stay the same. I’d still look for portals. We’d bring him home.”

That night, Laurel runs a bath. Could Silas Two really be within reach? The thought sobers her as much as it has invigorated Eli. If he’s right, gone is the era of daydreaming, the whole deck of possible cards. Partly Laurel is angry at her own naivete. The Duoverse has its own rules, just as Eli thought it would.

What did she propose at McMurdo? We use the antiuniverse like a time machine. Only now does she recognize her delusion. She wanted to believe they could skate through this world untouched. Laurel eases into the water. To her, living here feels as strange as walking backward, but Silas Two would be a native. If they find him, she and Eli will need to adapt.

—

She meets Maisie for the first time over frozen custard. Maisie squeals at the sight of her, and Laurel’s apprehension melts. When they hug, she lifts Maisie off the ground.

They sit at a picnic table, bare-shouldered, Maisie’s red tendrils floating in the sun. When Laurel misses a reference, she ascribes it to winter-over syndrome. Maisie listens with concern as she explains the symptoms: absentmindedness, memory loss. As summer wanes, Laurel’s stumbles become less frequent. She observes like a detective, listens more than she talks. This new facility disturbs her. It doesn’t seem like a good thing, a talent for impersonation. Yet there are moments, with Maisie, when it doesn’t feel that way at all. One day, Laurel and Eli join Maisie’s family at Vilas Beach. Maisie braids Laurel’s hair while the girls—Hazel and Frankie—bury Noah and Eli in sand. Laurel leans back on Maisie’s knees. The closeness she feels is so genuine that it seems there must be some essence of the Maisie she knows in this one; and she wonders if part of the reason she can slip into the other Laurel’s skin is not because she’s a thief but because the same is true of them.

—

Memories of the people they left behind emerge in the same way that those of Silas did. It feels like an optical illusion: people cease to be only themselves. Sitting with Maisie or Clare, Laurel sees two of them instead.

“Are you okay, honey?” Maisie asks once. “Your eyes kind of glazed over.”

It’s a kind of double consciousness, as painful as it is distracting. To manage here, Laurel must choose one image—one person.

In June, seeking comfort, she searches for mushrooms. She finds fawn-colored morels at the base of an elm tree. The ridges are filled with fine dust. As a tree composes, it sheds fungal cells, which disintegrate as spores and fall. Absorbed by the cups of waiting mushrooms, they feed the mycelium underground.

A red fox watches Laurel with slanted amber eyes. It seems surprisingly unperturbed by her presence. When she steps back from the elm, the fox pauses, motionless; then it pounces on the mushrooms. Bounding away with its prize, the fox seems to smile in triumph.

That evening, the animal’s behavior strikes Laurel as even more peculiar. Foxes typically run at the sight of humans, but this one didn’t see her as a threat. And why did it target the morels? She’s only seen foxes eat fungi in fall, when more appealing prey are scarce.

Laurel solves the riddle just before she falls asleep. The fox was unafraid of her for the reason it hunted mushrooms—the same reason that she couldn’t find meat in the grocery store. If life here moves from old age to infancy, the body shrinks until it blinks out of existence. There are no remains after death.

—

Laurel will teach the Principles of Composition in Science Hall, the auditorium where she first saw Gloria. In Laurel’s world, a Google search for Gloria Albert brought up thousands of hits, from the Washington Post (“ ‘Necrobiome’ of Deadwood Teems with Life”) to YouTube (“FREAKY PROF proves mushrooms GLOW IN THE DARK! [4K]”). Here, the same search conjures dozens of Gloria Alberts, but none of them are Laurel’s.

On the first day of the semester, she wakes in a state of imposter syndrome. When she comes downstairs, a French press sits on the dining table, and Eli is making blackberry pancakes.

“You didn’t,” Laurel says. She planned to scarf a granola bar.

Eli slides a pancake onto her plate. “This is a big day.”

The recipe was her father’s. Laurel savors the first bite.

“Thank you, Eli. This is the best thing to wake up to.” She pours each of them a cup of coffee. When he sits down, she says, “I’m nervous.”

“I know,” he says. “But you shouldn’t be. You’ve been working on this all summer.”

“The other Laurel has probably studied it for decades.”

“And so have you. Sure, fungi might give birth to people here, but now you know this stuff backward and forward. You’re an excellent scientist.”

She blushes at the pep talk. The weather is ideal, and Eli tells her not to think about the dishes, so she sets off on foot. Near campus, the sidewalks are crowded, but not with the teenagers she’s used to: most students seem to be in their sixties. Science Hall’s wheelchair-accessible entrance is at the front of the building, instead of tucked to one side.

When she enters the auditorium, an excited murmur moves through the audience. Laurel pauses in the wings to find her bearings. She hasn’t taught a course since graduate school. Even then, she was assisting someone else. These students have come for her—or, rather, they’ve come for Laurel Two. At thirty-seven, she would be solidly mid-career, even eminent: a Gloria herself.

The hour strikes. Laurel channels Gloria’s command as she takes her place at the podium.

—

By April, the scent of lilac drifts through the air in currents. Fall was Laurel’s favorite season at the orchard, but spring came close. She savors the memory of full bloom, every tree in its fluffy petaled petticoat. The abundance was brief: soon, rain swept the flowers from their branches, and the ground was spattered with wet pink confetti.