Translated from Romanian.

Only one doctor – back when I was committed to a psychiatric hospital – had the inspiration to find a name for the disorder I suffered from. By a stroke of luck that is hard to explain, I was drawn by lot for a study that the good Doctor Shappard was to carry out on a patient from the Special wing. The investigation lasted almost a week and, believe me, it was the only time I felt that a member of the medical staff was taking me seriously.
Every time I told him about my journeys, Shappard was content to keep the voice recorder running and close his eyes for whole minutes, smiling discreetly at the corner of his mouth. At other times, at the most unexpected moments, he would suddenly open them and stare at me insistently, as if he were looking for traces of uncertainty on my face.
On the day the evaluation ended, with clear symptoms of sliding, I told him straight out.
- Doctor, I began timidly. By my calculations, I am in my fifth universe. You are the first who has had the luck to listen to me. In the other three you didn't even notice me.
I paused for a long time, breathed in and out a few times, then looked at him: his eyebrows were knitted together, and his eyes were two glowing coals.
- I thought you said you'd been in four others besides this one, he answered at last.
- That's true, I mumbled, confused. In the first one, the one I started from, you didn't exist.
- Don't you meet an alter ego in every universe?
- It's a slide, Doctor! I enter the other one's body as if it were an empty shell, ready to be occupied.
He muttered an "I see", then picked up the voice recorder and went out through the door of the private room, casting a fleeting glance at the guard assigned to watch me.
The silence that followed was heavier than any verbal reaction. I was left alone in the ward, with the fluorescent tube flickering nervously above me. Normally, after such a confession, the symptoms would ease a little. This time, however, the air seemed thinner, as if the universe were hesitating to settle. Ten minutes later, Doctor Shappard visited me again. From the moment he came through the door I knew he was different. He had borrowed something from the next universe. He looked frightened, and his neck had sunk between his shoulders, while his hands had developed a visible tremor. Yes, yes! I was close to a new slide, and the alternative reality waiting for me did not look at all encouraging.
He opened my file and leafed through it hastily. Then he told me in a sober tone that my condition was called Ontological Unanchoring Syndrome. That was all. As if it were enough and I should work out the rest myself. He hurriedly left the room and told the guard to lock the door.
Five minutes later – that was when I felt it.
The slide did not come as usual. There was no dizziness, nor that familiar feeling of an elastic stretched at the back of my neck. It was a short, violent fracture, followed by total silence.
When I opened my eyes, the tube was no longer flickering.
The ward was identical, but it worked differently. The walls were cleaner, and the smell of disinfectant had been replaced by a metallic, almost sterile one. I got up slowly – I was in the chair Shappard sat in when he visited me. My hands were different. Longer fingers, more visible veins, a small scar on my left wrist – one I had never had.
On the bedside table lay a thick file.
On the cover, in straight, impeccably printed letters, it said:
Subject: SHAPPARD, D.
Fastened with clear tape, a handwritten note announced:
19 May 2026 - Condition: stable.
Observations: recent episode of awareness.
I smiled without meaning to.
For the first time, I was not the one being observed.
Shappard's footsteps could be heard in the corridor before I saw him. A short, unbalanced gait, as if every step had to be negotiated with the floor. In the universe I had slid into, Shappard's neck was almost swallowed by his shoulders and his head pushed forward. He was trembling. Not violently, but constantly. His eyes were moist and restless. He looked at me with that guilty hope that the doctor already knows the answer but is slow to say it. I took the file from the bedside table before he could say anything. I quickly grasped the situation and took advantage of it without remorse. I left, listening to the guard turning the key in the lock.
I left the hospital unhurriedly, buttoning my white coat with one hand. The alternative Earth smelled different.
Trees dominated the landscape, but they resembled nothing I knew. Their trunks had a compact, almost mineral texture, and the bark seemed to repair itself as you looked at it. I understood – or perhaps I remembered – that they could not be cut down. Any attempt to wound them made them withdraw into themselves, becoming immovable. In their crowns, strange animals slept clinging to the branches, hanging upside down, held by muscular tails. They looked like bears with fur the colour of fresh leaves. I stopped at the end of the concrete path, close to a massive tree. At its base moved huge termites with glossy snouts. They did not gnaw the wood. They stayed almost motionless, feeding on the saliva that dripped slowly and continuously from the mouths of the huge hanging mammals. For whole minutes I remained absorbed in the scene unfolding before my eyes. From time to time, people in a hurry passed by me. They did not seem impressed by what was happening at the foot of the tree. I came closer and saw a termite up close. Its snout pulsed rhythmically, changing colour every time.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and got a terrible fright. I dropped Shappard's file next to the metal leg of the nearby bench.
At first I did not recognise her. Then the snub nose and the short-cropped hair made me shudder. She had the same superb eyes I remembered. It was her, Nicola, my ex-wife from the original universe.
- Come home, quickly, she scolded me. I've called your mobile dozens of times.
I searched the pockets of my white coat, but found nothing. I shrugged helplessly.
- What happened?
She looked me in the eye and ground her teeth, just like the version I had once known.
- I let one into the house, she told me in a trembling voice. I have no idea how it happened.
- What did you let in?
She looked at me as if I came from another world.
- The Abandoner got in! There's nothing we can do now.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me after her. We set off in a hurry towards the city that stretched out before us, without saying anything more to each other. In a side street we stopped in front of a four-storey building. She operated the intercom by placing her right hand on the device's screen. I followed her closely, up to the third floor.
- It didn't come in through the door, she told me as she unlocked it. There isn't a single trace. It appeared on the kitchen wall, right above the stove. As if it had always been there and only then became visible.
Honestly, at that moment I was seized by fear. I went into the hall, then Nicola leaned against the frame of the kitchen door and held out her hand. I took two steps and saw it. Four thick legs stuck to the tiles, the head of a praying mantis slightly tilted. An attitude that was neither curiosity nor threat. Only presence.
Nicola looked at me, puzzled.
- As if you'd never seen one before! Honestly, Vic. You're pathetic.
She came within two steps of the insect. The faint trembling in the air began to grow stronger, almost imperceptibly, but steadily.
- Let's hurry, she told me.
Then she disappeared into the room for a few seconds. When she came back she already had the bag with her documents in her hand. No clothes, no photographs.
Meanwhile, I stayed fixed on the creature. The insect did not move. It did not watch, it did not breathe. Its mandibles were closed, perfect, useless. On its back, almost invisible, the first egg had formed. Small, oval, with a smooth, opaque surface.
Nicola looked at her watch, then at the walls. Micro-cracks had already appeared, like premature wrinkles.
- Two hours, she told me. That's all that's left. Maybe less. Let's warn the neighbours and the emergency services.
We went out without closing the door.
- Houses don't get locked any more after the Abandoner, Nicola told me, looking at my terrified face. They're left behind!
On the stairs, near the ground floor, I felt the first wave. A brutal adjustment. Like when your bones put themselves back in place on their own. When we reached the bottom, a short, dry noise came from the apartment. A kind of sealing sound.
I felt a chill down my spine. My ex-wife looked at me in a way I did not know. Then her face changed. Her features came apart in layers, becoming a four-dimensional hologram, unstable and yet precise. At that moment I knew a new slide was coming. The sixth. Much faster than the others. There was no more time for fear, only for observation.
The transition lasted a fraction of a second – too short to be lived, too long to be ignored.
I arrived in a strange alternative reality.
At first they asked me nothing. That was the first sign that they did not need to. My presence was detected as a contradiction. The systems reorganised themselves around me with a cold elegance, like water flowing around a stone.
- There is a classification error, said a voice that came from nowhere in particular. You should not be here.
I tried to answer, but realised that I had already spoken. The thought had been enough. A calculated pause followed.
- I confirm the existence of five previous transitions, the voice went on. The sixth abnormally fast. Cause: the entity you call Nicola.
At the sound of the name, something changed around me. I heard my own voice, doubled by an echo.
- Nicola wasn't human, I said. Or she wasn't any more.
- Correction: Nicola was an interface between universes that cannot communicate directly.
- What am I here? I asked.
- You are the residue.
The word had been chosen with care. Not the last one, not the survivor. The residue is what remains after the function has been extracted.
- Biology was eliminated for efficiency, it continued. Human consciousness was not. It was absorbed, optimised.
- Why didn't you absorb me too?
- Because you do not belong to this universe. You are a vector of instability. Your presence will force a decision.
- What decision?
- Whether this universe must be preserved.
I smiled for the first time since the slide. A useless gesture, but still my own.
- If I am a vector of instability, then use me as a safety valve, not as a detonator.
The systems reacted at once. Hundreds of possible universes were tested, then eliminated. I felt them passing through me like a shower of multicoloured stars.
- State the condition, the same voice that came from everywhere urged me.
That was when I got bold.
- I want a universe in which my grandparents on my mother's side are at their home. In other words, a place that asks nothing of me.
The longest silence yet followed.
- This destination optimises nothing, it answered at last.
It recalculated, then understood. If the instability left the system, its universe could remain coherent.
- The transaction will be irreversible, it specified. And your adult identity is not compatible with that universe.
- Then adjust it, I said.
In practice it was not a negotiation; it was a fair exchange.
When the transfer began, there was no slide. No noise either. Only a gentle unravelling, like when you fall asleep on a summer afternoon and wake up somewhere else without remembering the dream.
I opened my eyes and looked at myself. I had short arms, grazed knees and quick breath. My body knew things my mind did not yet understand: the smell of damp earth, old wood and faint stove smoke.
The house was there.
The porch creaked the same way, the cherry tree a little crooked. Out the back, a hen was clucking for no reason.
Grandma was in the kitchen. She recognised me from the very first moment. I think that was one of the rules of this universe: important things needed no explanation.
Grandpa was outside, repairing a cart that never broke down for good. He raised his head and waved to me. For the first time since the slides began, I did not feel like an anomaly. I smiled from ear to ear. And I discovered something I had wanted so much. Safety.