The Window

Seen, not touched

"I believe I've looked through thousands of windows before," he said, his mouth agape, "but none has ever been quite like this."

In the quiet of the room, I stood back as he circled, creating an arc from one side of the window to the other. He was studying it, looking at every detail along its frame, the reflection of the desk lamp behind us, and through the glass to the image on the other side.

He held a hand up, reaching to touch it when I stopped him, grasping his wrist with a light but purposeful hand.

"My only request is we mustn't touch the window," I said, letting go.

His hand hung momentarily in the air before retreating to his pocket, his face angled toward me but not at me, to ask, "What happens if it's touched?"

To this question, I could not answer fully. I probed the theories in my mind, the memory of those I'd written in my notebook full of equations and footnotes.

"I have some ideas, but none fully proven. Best leave it alone until I can provide a more scientific test."

And with this answer, he seemed satisfied, still not averting his eyes from the image that lay just beyond the glass and frame. For there, the image that he saw was not one I put there but one his mind conjured all on its own. Though I've long looked into it, I could not have chosen what his image would be; that was for him the reason to keep watching.

When he had stared for a sufficient amount of time, I asked what he saw. To this, he merely burbled a few words, "My poor mother, the lightness then, of floating freely." His thoughts in word form were a mix of emotion and the state of the imagery. They were just as mine were when I first looked into the window.

Not more than a week ago, I had completed work on the frame—mechanisms of wire and current—and was grinding the last edges of the glass. You see, it's a multi-part construction like that of a fresnel lens but without the chromatic aberrations—a truly perfect plane for seeing, well, whatever the viewer thinks of.

In my first tests, I saw in the window a young man so fraught with anxiety that he hid under his bed, crying. Of course, I could not see the entire bed nor the room, but I recognized just a decorative edge of the duvet, which dangled to the floor in front of the boy. And I saw his eyes, filled with tears, and a bit of his school uniform, the crest of a Starling sitting atop oak leaves. These details, deduced in a matter of seconds, led me to recognize the boy was me. It was the first day of class at boarding school, and I was so dreadfully frightened of being away from home that I hid for the whole day beneath the bed.

In subsequent tests, I saw other things—my adolescent self standing over a dying bird fallen by a stone from my hand. Or another moment when I sat in the rose garden weeping after my mother had passed. Each was seen as through a telescope or with some other magnification not yet invented.

The man here, standing agape at the window now, sees something else at that same distance. He watches the shadows and shapes of a child, a foetus, still in the womb. The eyes of the child open and close, as do the fists. The skin, so delicate in the embryonic fluid, is almost translucent. As the light shifts, perhaps the mother reading by candlelight, we can see the child's heartbeat under the still-forming ribs. We can see the arc of the spine subtly as we move with parallax to the edge of the frame.

And all these movements, just the same as when I saw my own self hiding under the bed, the eyes of this child follow us. The window, as my tests now confirm, is two-way. But what, if anything, can the subject inside the pane see? Are we apparitions clearly visible to them? I do not have any recollection from my own childhood of seeing such things, but the memories of those moments are so far in the past, can I be sure of it?

I pick up my laboratory notebook to jot down these thoughts. My hands are shaking with excitement and pulsing with anticipation of the further tests I will perform. I shall take the time to scour my memory for moments where I may have seen things unexplained and irrational. I note on a new page the spectre that lurked by my window as a child, its shadows falling from the tree outside when, in daylight, there were only twisted branches and tangles of moss.

But what, my mind turns, of these moments seen in the window, are they only of sadness or fright? Could they not be ones of immense joy? Surely our lives are full of these moments that they brim forth most easily?

I search my memory of the hours spent in quiet contemplation of the device, of the meticulous placement of each cog, each spark. In this design, I can find no fault in its systems.

As the window is meant to reflect our emotions, our memories, I realize the problem. Like a scent that lingers on our clothes, some memories of our past are never far from mind. And the ones hidden but most close to the surface, so indelibly etched, are the traumas we have yet to wrestle. No, I resolve, the issue with the window is not a mechanical one, not one of construction or materials. The error is human.

I am awakened from this daydream by a horrible crash. The man, fallen to the ground, taking with him some of my instruments on the nearby bench. In the clatter of it, I see him curl on the ground, his eyes open, his mouth still agape. My hands, trembling with my own excitement, reach for him, hoping to right him. But I find that his eyes and pulse are becoming more still by the second. I call out for help and hear heavy steps coming from the next room where my assistant works. She shrieks as she enters, the man on the floor, me draped over him. But her eyes are on the window.

Looking up, I see a watery ripple in the scene and the embryonic fluid rushing down and out of the window. I look to the man's hand and see that it is covered in the same; his suit jacket is wet. In the window, I see the child, still in the womb, begin to close its eyes. Under the translucent skin, the heart slows further and further until all movement stops.

My assistant holds herself on the door frame, sobbing uncontrollably, as I stand. I have no words to describe to her what has transpired. Could I find them, conjure them out of thin air, I am not certain they would make sense.

But at that moment, and the ones that followed, I am resigned to cover the window, to put it in a crate, sink it to the bottom of the ocean…and never to look into it again.

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Music to read by: The Heart Asks Pleasure First by Michael Nyman

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Backstory

I owe a lot to Ray Bradbury. Few writers, even on repeat reading, have captured my imagination the way he has. So it should come as no surprise that he inspired this story. What did come as a surprise to me is that I wrote this on his birthday, August 22nd.

On my last night in Shirley, BC, I was reading a Bradbury anthology, each story sparking a sense of childlike wonder in my mind. His stories, capturing both the light and dark of humanity, are extraordinary.

While reading, I was struck by how Bradbury often dives right in with little introduction. Sometimes his writing takes a few paragraphs to find your footing, but by then—since the stories are usually short—you’re already hooked. I imagine I’m not the only one who feels this way.

That night, between stories, I looked out the window at the Salish Sea where I’m having dinner. It looked like this…

Point-No-Point Resort in Shirley, BC

And I hear two things in my head:

1. A remembered quote from Bradbury where he describes making a list of possible story ideas—The Rocket, That Woman On The Lawn, The Dragon. In his telling, he wrote down titles as fast as he could knowing the stories would come sometime later.

2. This opening line: "I believe I've looked through thousands of windows before," he said, his mouth agape, "but none has ever been quite like this."

So, the next morning, with a bit more than an hour to spare before checking out of the resort, I grabbed my coffee and said aloud, “How fast can I write a story?”

With that opening line and a presumptive title I wrote with speed. An hour later, The Window is on the page.

Happy [belated] Birthday, Ray.

-j.