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Look, he–he’s having these weird dreams, alright? At first it was just the stars, brighter and closer than he’s ever seen them and he reaches and reaches and wakes up with tears in his eyes. Then there were the snippets of something he can’t quite discern, there’s a chair with impractical buttons on it, there’s the echo of conversations and the shadow of a smile.
And then–
Jim lies on his rooftop after waking up from the most recent dream, a yell trapped in his throat, mind halfway to another place and raises and raises his hands towards the starry sky until it becomes blurred and he can pretend he’s not on dirtside anymore.
Jim’s life is peaceful, he wakes up, goes to work on his fields, modifying the structure of his babies, to try and make the grain suitable for the harsh environments that are expanding more and more. It’s not that there is a lack of food, with replicators and perfectly constructed storages with the proper soil. It's more that the floor needs the nutrients of the flora that have been disappearing and artificial ones are not nearly enough. He will start in Iowa, with the limited resources the government is offering him, then he will see.
And in his free time he fixes things: tractors, tv’s, refrigerators, you name it. Whatever with a bit of technology in it’s fair game.
He 's fine. Content even, so the occasional worried looks Sam casts his way are uncalled for. Unnecessary.
Part of his field was infested with a plague, once, it was not a big deal, just some calls, a few days and the crops were as good as new. Jim still can’t forget the dread that crept into him when first set his eyes on it. Cold sweat, trembling hands, the nonsensical thought of finding all the food he can before it’s too late. The impulse was gone as abruptly as it came, like a flash, an opening door to something he shouldn’t have glimpsed.
He fears, in the privacy of the third glass of unregulated alcohol and a closed door offer, that he’s going crazy.
He fears it’s a warning.
“Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re nuts?” Sam says from the door Jim forgot to close.
“Oh, I have,” he admits, at the verge of laughing, but his hand remains steady and says nothing else.
He hears his brother sigh and he can picture him shaking his head in the way that is specially reserved for him. “Unbelievable.”
He adjusts the magnification in the microscope and frowns. Or his sample suddenly developed an extra nucleus or he’s been at this for too long. Jim rises from the slouched position he was in, peering into the microscope and blinks a couple of times to get rid of the black spots.
"Don't you have a son to worry about?" He asks and stretches, god, everything in him is sore.
“You haven’t left the house in days.”
Which isn’t what he asked, but whatever. Jim hums, grabbing his notebook and narrowing his eyes at the notes, trying and failing to decipher his chicken scrawl. Even after all this time he can never be bothered to organize his notes and everything ends up being a damn puzzle.
“The wife and I are having dinner tonight,” Sam says, amusement clear in his voice, he damn well knows Jim’s predicament and is happy to let him fester in the consequences of his own actions. “Come with us.”
The thing with his notes is that they are done with the first pencil or pen or fucking crayon he finds. Yes, he should have stocked his laboratory with a respectable pack of black pens and red or blue, if he’s feeling a little daring, but well, he always forgets that, too. So his stock is full with chewed pens of whatever color he managed to find scattered around and the crayons his goddaughter leaves in his house after a babysitting session, Bones always buys her the best ones.
Thank god he has a good memory, he will decipher what that little doodled chili means, eventually.
“That wasn’t a request, eh?” Sam clarifies as he turns to leave. “If I don’t see you there, I will return to drag you out. Kickin’ and screamin’ if I have to”
Jim rolls his eyes, but puts down his notes and sets an alarm twenty minutes before the time he knows his brother’s family eats. Sam is not one for empty threats.
“This one always has his head on the clouds,” Sam says after the third time Jim failed to hear his name.
“Out of the two of us, you were always the daydreamer.” Jim says, ignoring the sting of embarrassment at his distraction. He turns to look at Ally. “I can’t remember how many times the professors threw chalk at him.”
She snickers, “I think I have an idea.”
.
“Sometimes I fear you are not really here with us, y’know?” his brother says after the meal is over and they are washing the dishes, “That that big head of yours is going to get lost wherever it is that you go and you won’t be able to get back.”
Jim snorts, “that was awfully poetic of you, watching a lot of Telenovelas, are you?”
Sam goes red in the face but refuses to back down, ah, those Kirk genes. “My point is, you shouldn’t shut yourself in that lab for days on end.”
“You’re awfully sentimental, did something happen?”
He goes still and Jim has to bite down a smile. Gotcha.
“Ally is pregnant.”
The plate Jim’s holding slips from his hands and claters loudly on the sink. But it doesn’t matter, because–
“No way!” He almost screams, smiling as hard as his face allows him before throwing himself at his brother, almost tackling him to the floor. “Congratulations!”
Sam laughs, hugging him back. It’s a wonderful thing, he absolutely cannot wait to spoil the hell out of that kid.
Jim disentangles himself, hands on his brother shoulders and tells him just that, but–
“Why do you look so worried?”
“We–” he says and stops before clearing his throat “--we are going to move to Illinois. Ally's parents are there.”
“Ah.” and in between the warmth at the thought of having a niece and the numbness creeping into his limbs at his brother leaving the state, Jim’s actually a little bit offended. "You know I'm an adult, don't you?"
“You will always be a fetus in my eyes.” Sam says, like the jerk he tries to pretend he isn’t and splashes him with water.
Jim gasps, outraged at the audacity and throws his sponge at him, hitting Sam straight in the face. His cackle lasts until his brother puts an arm around him and shoves his face into the faucet.
That night Jim dreams about a red sky upon an unforgivable desert, sand falling between his fingers, red curtains that go forever and chess pieces scattered on the floor, looking at him in accusation.
He wakes up covered in sweat, hand stretched trying to reach for something that was never there and an overwhelming loneliness that lasts for a second and an eternity.
And he yearns and longs for something that was never real, for the feel of steel and a humming wall under his palms. Other times, the ones that leave him breathless like something clawed ruthlessly at his chest, are dark, dark eyes watching him as he is the stars and the cosmos and all the answers they can offer. He craves the inhumanly warm skin beneath his hands, his mouth, his body.
He craves and, somehow, feels alone in his own mind.
Jim lets out a breathy chuckle when he opens his eyes.
He goes to lie on the roof, like he sometimes does and thinks about nothing– about repeating themes and patterns.
Blue, Jim thinks as the wind ruffles his hair, is his favorite color. It's the sky, it's calm and a storm waiting to happen. It's a force of nature.
There’s something about interpreting dreams, about them representing wish fulfillment, unconscious desires. Jim can believe that about the stars and the familiarity as he walks through corridors that seem to have no end.
Stars, well, it can mean that he wishes to be something more than he is, to be somewhere else.
The whispered conversations, though, and the fear that clings into his bones when he dreams of a hand pressed on the glass, seem to say otherwise. There’s nothing he can think of to explain it. But then, he’s not supposed to, because there’s this other thing about repression and the unconscious and whatever, but he’s never been a fan of psychoanalysis, so he mostly ignores it.
Jim tries to think about it– him, while awake but it dissolves into something that is not nothing, a familiar shape in the corner of his eye that vanishes as soon as he turns around.
“Alternative reality?” Bones grunts.
“More like parallel universes.” Jim says, holding the can of beer Bones offered him and watching on the Tv something about the latest incursion to Mars. “I’ve been researching, y’ know? And some people base their ideas of parallel universes on quantum mechanics. There, multiple states of existence for particles are all possible at the same time — a "wave function" that encapsulates all of those possibilities. However, when we actually look, we only ever see one of the possibilities–”
“Jim,” says Bones and he already knows what he’s about to say “I’m a damn doctor, not a physicist.”
“But you’re my friend,” he argues and puts a hand over his heart “and in your contract comes that you have to hear me.”
McCoy snorts and drowns his beer. Jim counts it as a sign to continue.
“As I was saying– the many-worlds theory proposes instead that every time one state, or outcome, is observed, there is another "world" in which a different quantum outcome becomes reality. Take it like the branches in a tree, in which every second our perceived universe sprouts another branch and another and another into near-infinite alternatives.”
He closes his eyes and imagines it. A different choice made, all his thoughts and things a little to the left.
“It is said that those alternate universes are completely separate and unable to intersect, so there may be versions of you that, I don’t know, decided that a mustache is fashionable and decided to wear it until you die. There may even be a version of you that is a doctor on a starship! And you'd never know it.”
“There may even be a version of you that doesn’t talk as much.”
“We can let ourselves dream,” he answers, putting an arm around Bones shoulders. “Maybe there is a version of you that isn’t as grumpy.”
A solution already discovered, one that never was. A different name, palms pressed together in a prayer for a different God.
"That's just one of the theories, of course." Jim says, placing his empty can on the table. "But don't you think about it? How would it be?"
“We already have our own problems, why should we go out looking for more?”
He smiles and raises his head to look at the ceiling. "Ah, Bones, you always so practical."
But Jim wonders.
He doesn't know what is going on, not really. Not what is causing the flashes of a life that is not his, but he wishes it would stop. He's content with his life, maybe he's not out there, in the stars, but he's young and the possibility is becoming stronger each day, with the advances on space travel.
He wishes it would stop, he doesn’t need to remember how it was not to be alone in his own mind, even if it was just for a second.
He doesn’t need to--
Jim is different, is what he's trying to say. The choices they made, the opportunities they had. He is his own person and he doesn't need to yearn for something that Other Jim had.
Not at all.
He’s watching the news in Bones house when it happens.
First Contact, it says, in bold red and Jim thinks nonsensically that it should be green, but it does not matter because the world is finally aligning itself as it should be. Even with Bones screaming at the tv about germs and pathogens.
“Why are you smiling like that?” McCoy asks, stopping mid-rant.
“This is a good omen, Bones!” He says, incapable of holding in his joy. “There are advanced civilizations out there, one is ready to make an alliance with us! Imagine the possibilities.”
“There are riots, Jim.”
Jim winces, “there is always fear of the unknown.”
Bones makes that funny face of his, takes a breath and starts a fairly impressive rant. Jim cannot stop smiling, not even when his friend’s voice reaches unprecedented volume.
.
So, so, so.
So, he’s still dreaming, alright? There’s always something that’s still a little to the left, but, and hear him out, he thinks he’s close to figure out what the hell all this means. And if he’s not–well, who can delve in that when there’s all these possibilities ahead?
Bones fears he’s gone off the rails once again and Sam, states away, is not so subtle about his needling as he thinks he is, but– for the first time in a while he’s looking ahead. And if he’s a little more scattered than usual, if he’s more distracted, sprouting ideas that seem to go nowhere, but he knows will pick up at some point–well, who can blame him?
So, he’s fine-ish.
Now, if only his mind would get the memo that he’s enough, thank you.
Except–
He’s been thinking -and thinking and thinking and dreaming and he comes to the conclusion –a rather feeble one– that what he misses is not the feeling of someone else crowding his mind.
He misses –a knowing look directed his way, a light touch on his arm, words upon words– being understood. Maybe.
There’s a man on the other side of the street.
He’s not from here, that he knows.
And he knows it because in this insufferable small town everyone knows everyone. He has his hands behind his back, a hat that clashes with his clothes and is looking at the vast expanse of the fields– his fields.
Jim goes to him, light on his feet, because he’s never been good at helping himself when he sees new people.
“Did ‘ya find what you’re looking for?” Jim asks– it’s the only thing he can say, the only thing that makes sense.
The man turns to look at him, slowly, like he has all the time in the world and everything will just fall in place for him.
“I think I did.” He says and accommodates his hat, so the shadow won’t completely cover his face.
And when Jim looks at those brown, brown eyes for the first and a thousand times his heart bursts into colors and his face breaks into a blinding smile.