Alien Proliferation

funneled into Paul Gower about a year and a half ago. ACE had told me a lot about God and other things, and I found myself wondering where it was and whether it was watching me. Maybe ACE was the string. I checked; the string was still there.
    The universe wheel was still spinning. In fact, as far as I could tell, it was going around again. I realized something scary—there was only one universe where Earth had A-Cs on it, at least, only one where I knew they existed. I hadn’t seen Jeff, or any of the other A-Cs on Earth, in any other universe. So there was only one where I was with him.
    I felt cheated. I knew if I died, I’d be with Reader and Chuckie and my parents, and so many others, in other universes. It would be hard for them in the one I was from, but I was there, elsewhere. But Jeff wouldn’t have that. He and I had one chance in what seemed like a zillion, and it was being taken away.
    Surprises abounded. If someone had asked, I would have said a disembodied soul or mind couldn’t cry. Would have been wrong. I was sobbing. I wouldn’t see my baby, my husband would be alone, and I wouldn’t see them in any other world, either. This was it, and I was going to miss it all. I didn’t want to miss any of it, not even the pain, if it meant I would never hold my baby, never see Jeff’s smile again.
    I want to go home! I shouted it, but no vocal cords meant no sound.
    I felt a tug. The string jerked me. But it was frayed, I could see it. I chose not to panic and started to move along it, as best I could. I was able to move, and I found myself wondering if this was what the superbeing parasites felt like—lost, alone, held to life by a fraying string. If they didn’t turn mammals into horrifying, murderous creatures, I’d never kill one again. Then again, maybe I was going to turn into one, fly into some world I didn’t belong in, or even into my own, and attach to some poor unsuspecting sap and make him or her an evil superbeing. I didn’t like where my mind was going with this.
    I want to go home to Jeff and our baby. I was begging. It’s not fair.
    I waited to hear some big voice in the ether tell me that life wasn’t fair. Got the silence of the uninterested instead. I’d have called God a jerk, but remembered He’d sent Reader back for me nine months ago. Guessed that was a short-term loan.
    Kept moving along the string. Got past some frayed portions but had no confidence I’d be able to hold on if something snapped. Had to figure I needed to speed this up. The universe wheel was spinning, and I had no guess as to how I was going to fling myself back into the right one, string or no string.
    Started to focus. My kung fu instructors had spent a long time working with me on learning how to meditate. I still sucked at it, but one thing I’d gotten was that slavish devotion to one idea was good. I tried to figure out which one thing I should focus on. Ran through my options, then reminded myself that Jeff was only in one place, at least for me, and if I ever wanted to see him again, perhaps he was the right focus object.
    Problem was, any time I thought of him, I had trouble doing much other than thinking about how great he was, and this tended to shift my focus onto our sex life. Even disembodied with nothing to enjoy sex with, I was right back to thinking about making love to him.
    I was more than resentful that I was apparently going to die without getting to make love to him again. In fact, the more I thought about that, the more pissed off I got. Bad enough to die in childbirth and saddle my poor baby girl with that kind of unwarranted but hard to ignore guilt, but I wasn’t even getting good-bye sex? I’d kind of planned on going via death by orgasm, since sex with Jeff was always a good bet for that kind of end. I’d also planned on going when we were like ninety or something, not when I wasn’t even twenty-nine yet.
    In fact, the baby was supposed to have come on or around my birthday. As I thought about it, we hadn’t even made it to Christmas. Couldn’t remember when Christmas was right now, but it was close. And I’d been denied. Sure, my family had pretty much avoided the December holidays my entire life, and Jeff, as an A-C, had no Christmas at all, since their religion wasn’t from our world. So it wasn’t like we’d planned anything big. But it was the idea of the thing.
    Denied good-bye sex. Denied death by orgasm. Denied my baby. Denied years of marital bliss with