Chapter 33
Doors and Choices
When the door to the coffee shop opened, the bell rang and the Owner called out, "Welcome! Be right with you!"
Roy walked inside and looked around. Other than the Owner manning the counter, there was "Alan" (A.K.A. the Crown Prince of Ariela), going back and forth taking people's orders.
After approaching the cash register, Roy asked the Owner, "It's just you and uh, Alan, today?"
"That's right," said the coffee shop Owner. "George has school, obviously. Uncle Theo's out of town for an amateur alchemist's convention. As for Peggy, well . . . She's not feeling okay and took the day off."
Concerned, Roy asked, "Really? Is she sick?"
"I really can't say either way," the vampire said with a shrug.
"I hope she gets better soon," said Roy.
Looking out the window, the coffee shop Owner said, "Me too, Roy. Me too."
**********
Peggy was out taking a walk around town. She passed by shops, crossed through marketplaces, and traversed alongside the canal. All the while, her eyes were cast to the ground.
The day before, she had received a letter. It was a simple, one-page letter that started with, "Dear, Miss Lau. We are sorry to inform you . . ." That letter was just the latest of a long line of letters that started the exact same way. Most of them came from places she tried applying for jobs at. Some were from realtors she had turned to for help finding a new home to call her own.
You can imagine how her quest went from the way all those letters started.
Thanks to that fortune telling she had with Max, Peggy had expected the latest letter to turn out the way it did. However, that made it no less upsetting. So, thinking that she would not be able to keep her feelings in check while working, she called in sick. But being cooped up in the house all day would probably worry Mrs. Arkans, which would explain Peggy's aimless wandering.
Her legs took her to the town square where the statue of a broomstick-wielding girl with a big, pointed hat stood tall and proud.
Peggy stopped in front of the statue and looked up while thinking to herself how she's hit a dead end with her life.
She sighed.
"Just what am I doing?" she asked the statue.
The statue, of course, just stared blankly ahead and did not answer. In the background, Peggy could hear hustling and bustling mixed into a constant chorus of daily life.
And then, someone suddenly whispered into Peggy's ear, "So sorry to do this to you, dear."
The whisper belonged to a lady who sounded very familiar, but Peggy couldn't quite put her finger on who. Before she could ask the lady what she was apologizing for, she was suddenly shoved her in the back.
Peggy stumbled several steps forward, nearly fell down. Understandably angry, she spun around and screamed, "WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA, YOU -!?"
She froze when she suddenly realized she was no longer at the town square.
"What the-!?"
Peggy spun right and left. She found herself standing in the middle of a completely white space. And there were doors all around as far as her eyes could see.
"How'd I get here? And where even am I?"
**********
Back at that same town square, a vampire lady in an elaborate black gown from Zhao stared ahead at an empty space where Peggy had been standing just a moment ago and then spoke under her breath.
"I really am sorry to do this to you, Peggy," she said, apologizing again. "But there's no other way."
She had been the one who pushed Peggy from behind and, using her special powers, made Peggy fall out of this world, literally.
But the vampire lady had a good reason for doing this.
"No one in this world, not even I, can do anything about your Untethering which puts you in danger of falling out of this world to who-knows-where in Infinity. But maybe THEY who dwell outside of worlds can help you. Maybe THEY can restore your Tethering and anchor you to this one.
"At least, as long as that's what you want."
**********
"Hello?" Peggy called out. "Anyone here?"
She had spent maybe an hour wandering this strange, white world full of floating doors, searching for possible residents. Her watch had stopped working so it was hard to keep track of the time. But the deeper she went, the more apparent it became that she was alone here.
"Seriously, how many times does that make now?" Peggy wondered aloud, referring to the number of times she's suddenly found herself in a weird place, which was actually a LOT more than she actually knew.
Loud gurgling sounds came from her stomach.
"Of all the days to skip breakfast," she grumbled to herself.
She approached a nearby door and hammered her fist against it.
There were doors of all sorts in this weird white space: steel doors, wood doors, plastic doors, glass doors, double doors, single doors, revolving doors, Japanese paper sliding doors, dial vault doors, iron gates, steel shutters, and draped entryways. Some doors were red. Other doors were blue. Many were white, while a few were unpainted. A couple metal ones were rusted. And there was one door covered at the base in mold. The list went on and on, and on.
The one Peggy approached was a tall one made of mahogany wood.
"Hey! Anyone there?" she shouted.
No surprise, there was no answer.
Peggy's stomach gurgled again.
"You know what?" she muttered aloud to herself. "Forget waiting for an invite. I'll just see if there's anything on the other side."
She grasped the curly brass handle of the mahogany door, but before she could twist it down, a voice called out from behind.
"Hi!"
"Gah!" Peggy cried out.
She spun around to see a tall, heavyset Asian boy in a white t-shirt and gym shorts standing behind her. He looked to be around twelve or thirteen years old with small, squinty eyes crinkled by his big smile.
"Sorry for the wait," he said. "I just got done helping someone else."
"No problem," Peggy replied, almost breathlessly. She was still recovering from the fright the boy unintentionally gave her.
"You look like you got a lot of questions," the boy pointed out.
"I do, actually, yeah," said Peggy.
"I can try tell you whatever I can, if that's okay with you," the boy said.
"Sure, that's fine," said Peggy. "First things first, who are you?"
"Me? I'm Kent," said the boy.
"I'm Peggy," said Peggy. "Second, where are we?"
"We're nowhere and everywhere, the world between worlds, one of an infinite number of spaces where all possibilities converge."
Peggy blinked. "Huh?"
"It's a place where you can go to different worlds from," Kent said more bluntly. "Sorry, my boss has a thing for looking and sounding all mystical and stuff. They're that kind of person."
"I see," Peggy said. Not really.
She took a look around.
"So all these doors go to a different world?" she asked.
"Yep," said Kent. "From different versions of the same world to completely alien worlds, at any place and at any time. And I mean ANY place and ANY time. You can go to a world where no one has to work, or a world that won't ever have a war. There are even worlds where everyone's a robot. And you can go to any one of those worlds from here."
"Any of them?" Peggy said.
Kent nodded.
"Yep," he said. "So this could be your chance."
"My chance?" asked Peggy.
Kent replied, "You have the chance to travel to whatever world you want, to choose whatever world you want to live in. Any world at all! Even worlds that could give you anything and everything you could ever want."
"Anything and everything?" Peggy had a hard time wrapping her mind around it. "Like I go to a world, and the people there make me their queen the moment step foot in it?"
Kent nodded.
"That's . . . really something."
"But there is a catch," Kent said.
"Why am I not surprised," Peggy grumbled. She should have known better than to get all excited. "What is it?"
"It's not really a big deal," said Kent. "It's just that you can only choose one world to go to. That's it."
"That's it?" Peggy raised an eyebrow. And then it dawned on her. "Wait, that means that if I choose to go to a different world, I can't ever go back to Emeron. Boss, George, Mrs. Arkans, Roy, Alan, all those guys, I won't ever see them ever again!"
"That's right," Kent said. "You'd be leaving them all behind forever and ever."
"Then-!"
"Hold it!" a voice suddenly cut in.
Peggy turned around and cried out, "What the-!?"
A few feet away stood another well, her. There was a lady who looked exactly like Peggy, right down to the stain on her wristwatch. It was like looking at a mirror, only this Peggy was definitely flesh and blood.
"Are you . . . me!?"
The Peggy look-a-like nodded.
Peggy Original stared at her look-a-like for a couple of seconds and then slowly raised her left hand up to the side of her head. She dropped her hand down to her side and then slowly raised the other one.
The Peggy look-a-like frowned.
"What are you doing?" she asked. No wait! Never mind, you're me. So I already know what you're doing. But please stop. You're embarrassing us in front of the kid."
Peggy Original dropped her hands down and said, "Sorry."
"ANYWAY," the look-a-like said forcefully, "before you decide on anything, please think about it. You've been living in Emeron for more than a year. You're now fully qualified to take magical jobs. You've been qualified for several months now! And yet you're still barely scraping by as a part-time waitress. Sure you got real magic powers now, but nothing's really changed from your life on Earth! But over here, you could finally really, truly turn that around, to be something greater! Do you really want to throw that chance away?"
"But Boss and all my friends . . ." Peggy tried to counter, but was quickly cut off by her look-a-like.
"You were always going to leave them eventually," the look-a-like pointed out. "That would have happened anyway if you had actually landed any of the jobs you applied for."
"But it'd be wrong to just up and disappear without a word," Peggy said.
"You've done it before with Earth," her look-a-like said.
"It's different this time!" Peggy Original fired back. "I didn't have anyone back on Earth. But over here, there are people I'm sure will be hurt if I do that. I don't want that to happen, ever! And just because I was planning to leave them, doesn't mean I planned to never see any of them again."
"So you're just going to throw away the chance of a lifetime and go back to spend the rest of your life on Emeron?"
Peggy nodded at her other self.
"Yes," she said. "Because that's what I chose the first time around. I knew life would be no easier on Emeron than on Earth. I was warned so. And when I made my choice to stay on Emeron, I was trusted by someone I owe a lot, to live with that choice and accept the consequences that came with it. I can't betray that trust. Not just for him, but for me too. I know if I just abandon everything I've built up to this point, I'll regret it."
"You'll still have to struggle from now on, you know," the Peggy look-a-like said. "You're missing out on the deal of the century to an easy life."
"Then that's the cost I'll pay for the choice I make here," Peggy said. And then she turned to Kent. "Please take me home."
Kent nodded and gestured to the left. "Right this way."
The Peggy look-a-like watched as the original followed Kent down to a door that had been a part of Peggy's life since she first stepped foot in the world of Emeron. It was the door to the vampire's coffee shop
Without any doubt, Peggy grasped the door handle, turned it and then walked inside. The door closed behind her and that was the last that Kent and the Peggy look-a-like ever saw of this version of her again.
For a while, the Peggy look-a-like and Kent just stood in front of the coffee shop door and stared at it in silence. But that silence was soon broken by Kent who asked:
"Well? Satisfied?"
The Peggy look-a-like gave him a glance and replied, "Yeah."
"What was that all about, anyway?"
The Peggy look-a-like replied, "Someone once told me that everyone is free to choose whatever they want to do with their lives. But for whatever we gain from our choices, there'll be a cost. My guess is it means if you decide on something, you better be ready to make sacrifices and deal with the problems that come with that decision. It's a lesson that stuck with me and got me thinking about what I did with my life up to that point and what I was going to do going forward. I just wanted to see what that other me would choose and if she had what it took to see that choice through."
"And? What do you think?" asked Kent. "Do you think she made a bad choice?"
"I think there were no bad choices in this case, just choices," said the Peggy look-a-like. "But I'm convinced she'll see her choice through to the end and whatever happens, she knows it's the right choice for her."
"And what about you? Were your choices right for you?"
"Who knows?" the Peggy look-a-like answered with shrugging shoulders. "Only time will tell."
She stretched her arms high over her head and then turned around.
"Well, time for me to go," she said.
"What will you do?" Kent asked.
The Peggy look-a-like answered back, "What else? I'm going to live my life with the choices I make. Good bye, Kent. See you next time."
"See you next time, Peggy."
And then Peggy Lau walked away with Kent watching her go. She didn't bother going through any door. Thanks to a choice she made a long time ago, she didn't need to.
When Kent blinked for just a split second, Peggy was gone without a trace.
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