Under The Mistletoe

One More Chance

I gulp down my umpteenth cup of coffee, but it has no effect on me. My eyes burn from exhaustion and I'm more asleep than awake. There's a persistent ache in my lower back, but I don't leave my desk. I turn to my four team members and they've all dozed off on theirs as evidence of long hours and many years of work monitoring the sights and sounds of space to know what else is out there.

My eyelids flicker like a light switch until I finally give in to a snooze. I wake when I hear a sudden suction sound and look to my colleagues who are still asleep. The sound stops, then returns ten seconds later. I slide over in my revolving chair to the central monitor where our space scanner is reading the universe and I don't see anything unusual, but the sound continues every ten seconds.

I climb to the rooftop to use the space telescope and see a hollow spot in the darkness. It opens and closes at intervals and in sync with the suction sound. I observe carefully for a few seconds and realise that I'm looking at a portal. I scream in excitement, then hurry back to wake my colleagues and share the news with them.

As the team leader, I suggest an immediate exploration of the portal and don't get any positive reaction. I know it's because Christmas is in ten days and they're all looking forward to spending it with their families, except me who has turned down a Christmas Eve dinner invitation with my parents and ignored a voice message they sent to probably try and change my mind.

I want to grant my team some time off, but I believe we've come too far to take a break. Also, from the readings on the monitor, it appears that the portal is in transit and might no longer be there after we return from the holidays. For this reason, they agree to join me on the expedition, so we suit up and enter our spaceship, then jet into the sky.

The ship goes in slow motion once we're in space, and using our locator, we navigate our way to the portal and see it in a distance. We feel the force of the suction as we approach and vibrate to the sound it makes, but that doesn't deter us.

Once we are in range, the portal sucks us in like a vacuum and spits us out at the other side. We see a world that looks exactly like ours with pastures and oceans, and a clear blue sky, but the only thing missing is life. We don't see any humans, animals, or insects. We explore further until we reach the centre of the portal that has a massive tree with a few branches.

Just like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, several paths converge at the foot of the tree like a star, including the path we're on. The only difference with the French monument that has twelve paths is that this one has ten paths like the sides of a star.

We advance and cross over to the path on our right, and once we enter, I notice that I'm all alone. I immediately understand that it's an individual path, and when I take the next step, a light flashes in my face.

I'm suddenly young again and in my family home preparing to apply to college. My father wants me to stay back and study Engineering like him, but my mother prefers Sciences in another city. To appease my father, who pays the tuition, I stay back and meet the dashing son of our new neighbour. We get married in the future and have two beautiful kids.

I exit this path and I'm confused, because I never studied Engineering, neither did I stay back with my parents. It then occurs to me that the path was an alternate one to my future. I enter another path and relive a decision I didn't make to get a different job, and there, I once again meet the same neighbour's son. A fourth path reveals another alternate decision I didn't make that led me to the same neighbour's son.

When I'm done visiting all nine paths, I realise that I might never find my true love and be happily married because of all the decisions I've made in favour of being a scientist and buried in work, especially my recent decision to cancel dinner with my parents because of work.

Just then, it occurs to me that I'm still on the tenth path and I can still change my fate if I make it back in time to Earth and accept my parents' dinner invitation.

With a locator device implanted in my wristwatch, I signal to my colleagues to meet me on the ship to journey back home. They all come out, some in tears for their wrong decisions and others smiling for making the right ones. I'm in between because I believe that the universe has given me one more chance to make things right.

When we exit the portal, we notice that time is different. Ten minutes in the portal is ten days on Earth, and I instantly lose hope because it's already Christmas morning and I've missed the dinner the day before.

Once we get back to the lab, I dismiss my colleagues who all hurry home to catch up with their family, while I remain in the office and feel lonely with no motivation to work. Instead of remaining in that state, I make a sudden decision to visit my parents and spend the day with them.

When I get there and apologise for cancelling on them, they tell me that they left me a voice message to move the dinner to Christmas day because they wanted me to meet someone. The 'someone' emerges and smiles, and I'm staring at the man from my alternate paths.