There’s a baby in the back of the glider, but it’s not mine. Sure, she looks like my baby, but my baby never cries when we’re cruising through the Kuiper belt. Quite the opposite. Cruising through the solar system’s outer reaches is sometimes the only way I can get her to fall asleep.
But this baby is wailing like an electric guitar.
And if there’s any doubt, then there’s the smell, or the lack of it. My baby farts like a race horse. No filtration system known to man can completely dilute it. Weaker noses would rush for the airlock, but I’m used to it after six months of sleepy time drives.
Oh Zod, this baby hasn’t let out a single toot since we left the other Pluto.
The glider’s autopilot detects my spike in stress levels and starts taking evasive maneuvers through chunks of frozen ammonia and methane, perhaps assuming that I’ve spotted interdimensional bandits.
I switch to manual, slam on the antimatter brakes, and turn to get a good look at the baby that’s not my baby. I think she realizes I’m not hers either because her wailing goes up an octave.
We hang motionless in space, floating in a velvet black sea where spiraling icebergs glint like diamonds, though all motion is relative. Everything’s relative, just another version of something else altered to a greater or lesser degree.
I trill and coo at the baby. Jasmine—if this baby who looks like mine also has the same name—eventually quiets down a little. Well, at least we have that degree of similarity.
She’s secured in her zero-gravity bouncer. It looks like the one I got my own at first glance, but then I see the Omni 360 label. I could never afford one of those…is this even my glider? Nope, this one has leather-trimmed seats. Mine has synthetic seat covers. How did I not notice?
Where is my Jasmine? Trilling and cooing at not-my-Jasmine all the while, I try to keep above the rising tide of panic.
The most important question is this: What would I do?
Continue on and pretend that I have the right baby?
No, I could never live with myself. Plus, Indigo would know the difference. She’d tell Lois and Lois 2.0 because she tells her mothers everything.
And my mothers-in-law would never let me hear the end of it:
You left your baby… in another dimension!?
I should’ve never stopped for that space burrito on the other Pluto.
I don’t do it too often, but if I went to the Plutaco’s in our solar system every time I took Jasmine on a sleepy time drive, then I’d pack on too many pounds and Indigo would find out that I’m cheating on our diet.
That’s what’s great about the Plutaco’s on the other Pluto. Tastes the same, but I’ll never gain weight. It’s all about those tiny differences in atomic properties that really add up when something as complex as a Plutaco’s burrito meets an incompatible digestive system from another dimension: Their space burritos go right through me.
Oh Zod, I crossed dimensions for the empty calories and now I’ve lost my daughter.
Not-my-Jasmine falls silent and wrinkles her nose. I smell it as well.
She’s not crying. She’s farting. Too much work. Too much driving. Too much babying. It was all in my head.
I take a deep whiff of relief. Oh no… that was me.
She begins bawling again. I redouble my trilling and cooing efforts to no avail.
Okay. Think. Think. I have my not-my-Jasmine in my not-my glider.
I know myself, and I have to trust in that.
So, what would I do?
There’s really only one answer.
I’d get my damn baby back.
I slam the not-my-glider into overdrive and set a zig-zag course for the other Pluto.
When we pass by this solar system’s Pluto, I resist the urge to stop and check there for my Jasmine. There’s no way my glider is faster than this upscale one, so she won’t be there.
I think I know what happened. Plutaco’s is great, but they make you get out and wait in line, an old Earth tradition they say. But if they really wanted to be authentic, I guess they’d also make you take your baby out of the glider.
I remember hearing somewhere that everyone on Earth used to freak out whenever someone left a baby behind in one of their ground gliders.
Doesn’t make sense to me. Why wouldn’t you leave your baby somewhere that’s climate-controlled and only opens to your touch? It’s the safest place for Jasmine when she’s sleeping
Or at least it was until I somehow got back into the wrong glider.
When we zip past egg-shaped Haumea caught in its high-speed spin, not-my-Jasmine’s cries take on a different color. I realize she’s giggling.
As the Kuiper belt thins out and we reach its edge, she laughs herself to sleep. Oh, so this baby likes to go fast.
Then, we pass through the veil. Instead of reaching the Oort cloud and interstellar space, we just arrive in another Kuiper belt wrapped around another solar system.
The rest of the universe is closed off to us, and no one knows why. Some say another civilization beyond our understanding has hemmed us in with alternate realities until we’re mature enough to venture forth to other stars. Everyone calls them the Shadowlords.
I wonder if the Shadowlords are watching my antics now and setting back the clock for humanity’s release.
Not-my-Jasmine and I don’t make it all the way to the other Pluto because another glider is hurtling towards us.
The other glider slows, and I do the same. We dock alongside one another.
When the airlocks open, I see man in his late-30s with a slight paunch.
He’s not-me, and he looks like he wants to punch me. I would.
“Other Plutaco’s?” he finally asks.
“Yeah…”
“How’d she do?”
“She cried until I went into overdrive.”
“Yeah, she does that. Yours farted no matter what I did.”
“Yeah, she does that. So…”
Without another word, we shuffle past one another and into our respective gliders.
As we undock our gliders, I lay my eyes on my own sweet Jasmine, still sleeping soundly and tooting away. It doesn’t matter what dimension we’re in because, for the moment, this is where I belong.
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