Infinity: A Jenlisa AU

Chapter 29

Jennie thinks, Why this last memory on the brink of my death? Was I the most happy in that moment? The most purely myself?

"Stop it!"

Lisa is standing in the kitchen nook, dressed now.

She looks at Jennie2.

She looks at Jennie.

At the Jennie with a bullet through her head.

The Jennie on the screened-in porch with her throat cut.

And somehow, without so much as a tremor in her voice, Lisa manages to ask, "Where is my wife?"

Jennie2 looks momentarily thrown.

Jennie wipes the blood out of her eyes. "Right here."

"What did we do tonight?" Lisa asks.

"We danced to bad music, came home, and made love." Jennie answers Lisa as she looks at the woman who stole her life. "You're the one who kidnapped me?"

Jennie2 looks at Lisa.

"She knows everything," Jennie continues. "There's no point in lying."

Lisa asks, "How could you do this to me? To yourself?" Lisa's voice breaks, taking in the horror all around them.

Jennie2 looks at her.

She is only six or seven feet away, but Jennie is sitting on the floor.

Jennie couldn't reach her before she pulled the trigger.

Jennie thinks, Get her talking.

"How'd you find us?" Jennie asks.

"Lisa's cell has a find-my-phone app."

Jennie looks at Jennie2. "And the others?"

"I don't know. I guess they followed me here."

"How many?"

"I have no idea." Jennie2 turns to Lisa. "I got everything I ever wanted, except you. And you haunted me. What we could've been. That's why—"

"Then you should've stayed with me fifteen years ago when you had the chance."

"Then I wouldn't have built the box."

"And that would be so terrible, why? Look around. Has your life's work caused anything but pain?"

Jennie2 made up her excuse, "Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice."

"Life doesn't work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don't cheat the system." Lisa says, her tone is cold, her eyes are tired.

So slowly, Jennie transfers her weight onto her feet.

But the other catches her, says, "Don't even."

"You going to kill me in front of her?" Jennie asks. "Really?"

"You had such enormous dreams," Jennie states. "You could've stayed in my world, in the life I built, and actually lived them."

"Oh, is that how you justify what you did?"

"I know how your mind works. The horror you face every day walking to the train to go teach, thinking, Is this really it? Maybe you're brave enough to admit it. Maybe you're not."

With full of rage, Jennie's voice raised, "You don't get to—"

"Actually, I do get to judge you, Jennie, because I am you. Maybe we branched into different worlds fifteen years ago, but we're wired the same. You weren't born to teach undergrad physics. To watch other people win the acclaim that should've been yours. There is nothing you can't do. I know, because I've done it all. Look at what I built. I could wake up in your brownstone every morning and look myself in the mirror because I achieved everything I ever wanted. Can you say the same? What have you done?"