Rosalind's Despair

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>When Robert leaves her, Rosalind feels that she's going insane. Constants begin acting like variables and nothing seems real.
>"When Robert left me after our latest failure in measuring the true reason behind DeWitt's inability to escape obvious constants (the telegram we sent him was useless), I became quite concerned. While he excused himself in saying that he came up with an experiment that would solve some of the issues we have been facing lately in measuring DeWitt, the fact that he did not tell me what he had in mind was worrisome in itself.
>In my search for Robert I began revisiting some of the locations related to the experiment and decided to run some of the test myself. The results were... astounding. I decided to visit DeWitt #101, who so far showed little difference from others, save for the fact that he lasted against Songbird for just a while longer than any other before he died. His coin came up as tails.
>The result of the test needed repeating and I was stuck for quite long time trying to recreate the exact conditions of the experiment with another Booker DeWitt, #102, who did not differ and his coin came up as heads. However, this Booker actually heeded the telegram and was playing around with his choice of a ball before he picked number 102.
>The results from other sites kept showing anomalies, even though initial conditions continued to remain the same throughout. I still couldn't find Robert at any of the locations and my earlier worry turned into desperation.
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>While I normally pride myself on the attitude of a scientist, with a demeanor and composure that is conducive to rational observation, Robert’s absence brought out unusual sense of anxiety that I found hard to suppress. Of course, test results kept bringing up further anomalies, and that only compounded my fears. Fear is an irrational response to the unknown, and despite my current predicament, where I was stretched and scattered among probability space meant that I should have nothing to worry about. Yet I knew nothing about Robert’s whereabouts or the reason behind fluctuations in the test results.
>It would be easy enough to dismiss them as outliers, yet they broke the pattern and undermined our theory of constants and variables. I postulated to myself that while it was possible to draw a connection between Robert’s absence during testing as an element that was affecting the results, I chided myself for assuming that his presence would affect the outcome. Its not the amount of observers that matter, but the observation. Yet my mind was growing desperate for a result that would answer Robert’s disappearance.
>To look in the mirror and to look at yourself were two different things, because mirror is only a reflection, while Robert was more than an image. He was me. Its hard to describe the situation and feeling of being in your own presence when there was no other person that has experienced the same. We used to finish each other’s sentences, we complimented each other in various tasks, it was an experience unlike any other. The fear that I might not experience that ever again filled me with dread that began to interfere with my ability to work.
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>But fear and anxiety that appeared in my mind were nothing next to confusion that I could not resolve. I felt helpless. Helpless in explaining the anomalies, helpless in inability to find Robert, and worst of all, helpless in holding back my emotions. So I did the only thing I could so and threw myself into a flurry of tests, both empirical and theoretical. Being scattered across probability space meant that physical and time constraints were a non-issue in reworking and redoing all of my and Robert’s work when we were still alive. I had to find an answer.
>Nonetheless, the tests did not produce any satisfactory results. With the complete collapse of our hypothesis on constants and variables, the anomalies remained unexplained and my confusion only grew. DeWitt seemed unhinged from any quantum event and ran through obstacles that previously killed him or did things that ended his journey while they were a non-factor before.
>I was at a loss. I did not feel like that ever since I was a child; my assumed knowledge in the field and my state of being gave me confidence that now evaporated in face of the unexplainable. My frustration became greater and my longing for Robert became almost like an illness. But this is where a true horror started. In these new circumstance, the anomalies became universal and the whole spectrum of the probability space became one big variable. Shortly after, I encountered DeWitt #123 - and witnessed his end. Not only he still conformed to the old probability model, but he defeated the odds and saved the girl. He did that by erasing her and himself, and in effect ending Columbia permanently. Yet I was still present in my scattered state.
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>I felt my sanity slip as I ran out of solutions. My impotence grew despite my abilities. I have forsaken any further detailed experimentation and begun a frantic search for Robert across all probabilities: New York, Columbia, even Maine and London, all without connection and sequence, simply going where my mind expected him to be. Was it possible that he was gone, just like DeWitt #123? But where would he be gone to? Back in his own reality? Erased from time-space completely as the paradox resolved itself? Why was I still here? These and more thoughts raced though my mind, pursuing me and driving home fact that I was alone.
>Why would he leave me? My rationality eroded and instead of asking questions about the change of variables and trying to answer them, I was overwhelmed by my feelings, trapped in a spiral of despair. Gone was the demeanor of a scientist and in its place appeared a broken woman. My whole personality and mind were bent out of shape and subject to self-inflicted torture, all because I was addicted to my male self. And even though he was me, I could not fathom a reason behind his disappearance or an experiment that would enable him to measure DeWitt.
>Several weeks have passed (or at least an equivalent of those, I did not track passage of time before, let alone needed it) since Robert disappeared when another dreadful feeling overcame me. Resignation after so many tries and failures, my growing confusion and Robert's absence, and the complete chaos that I begun experiencing when crossing from one probability to another took toll on my already weakened psyche. I could not hold back the void that started to fill my heart.
>Thinking back on my state back then, behaving like a desperate lunatic, I can't help but shudder with embarrassment and vow to myself that this would not happen again. I ceased observing the variables and didn't bother tracing their entanglement, and that required collected mind. But back then, I was not myself. I was looking for myself and it drove me ot the insanity i still shudder to recall. It was then when I decided could not deal with it anymore.
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>I could not live like that anymore, if 'life' was the proper word for my current predicament. How does one deal with this problem while having having their life functions terminated already? Technically I died once already when our contraption was sabotaged. The side effect resulted in our current state and there was little in explaining why it happened. However, Robert and I never preoccupied ourselves with why's but rather with how's and when's. Was our state of being a constant or a variable? Constants seemed difficult to explain and something that arbitrarily defied probabilities begged a theistic explanation of the quantum theory, but with a complete collapse of constants, God ceased to be a viable explanation. Thats when it struck me. If constants ceased to be, there must have been a universe where sabotage of the contraption did not work or where the contraption did not result in us scattering but simply snuffed out lives. It was a perspective which I embraced wholeheartedly. All I had to do was to find that moment.
>I knew our lab in Columbia would remain untouched, partially because it scared the lesser minds away and partially because Fink and Comstock were still deriving some use from it. There was a probability that the lab might have been dismantled, but that was the least of my worries. All that remained was finding the right place and the right time.I suspected that the contraption would remain rigged and charged for some time after our deaths, several hours to several a day at most. But it was probably that final charge that kept the machine up and ensured our scattering. All I had to do was to discharge it once I found myself back in the lab and I would be gone. Was I worried about adding a third Lutece to the bodies lying in the lab? It didn't matter without Robert.
>When I appeared back in our lab shortly after we expired, I still could smell the ether and ozone of the contraption as it discharged itself over and over, our lifeless corpses still laying close to it. Despite being fully aware of he situation, it still felt odd to stare at my dead self. But I was already far gone in my depression and longing for Robert, and the sight of his lifeless body brought me to tears. But I restrained myself from pointless mourning or self-pity over his expired body. My despair drove me to one thing only. The contraption was still charged and it held enough power to jolt me out of my singularity and turn me into a pile of mortified flesh. It was amazing that I put far more organized thought into my own death than in restraining myself or trying to figure out Robert's purposed experiment.
I grabbed hold of the lever and pulled.
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>I did not quite know what to expect. When I fell victim to machine's sabotage the first time, I didn't recall many details apart form painful electric shock that was powerful enough to kill me. I only gave a brief thought to this as I stood there, counting minutes and seconds as I saw my hand pull the lever down. It was a strange thing, that the closer I came to act irrationally, the more I felt alive and corporeal. I while I transplanted the entanglement onto a larger scale of the events that surrounded my expiration, I did not even consider to explore the issue fully. This was merely a hasty non-solution to my hysteria over Robert. While its easy to laugh at it now, back then I felt distress that I have not felt before in my life. Extraordinary problems demand extraordinary solutions, I rationalized it to myself as the lever went down and a powerful arc hit me. A brief flash of light and the darkness enveloped me.
>this felt much better, I thought to myself, with complete nothingness that surrounded me. I did not have to worry about not seeing Robert anymore... and that when I realized I was still worried. The realization that I was still self-aware and thinking followed soon after and another bout of panic and confusion swept over my mind. For someone who was technically omniscient my suicide attempt appeared sloppy. But I did not feel omniscient anymore, and after what felt like hours of panic and terror in the dark, I started feeling something. It was a headache. What followed was immense exhaustion as my bodily awareness and motor skills swarmed and in my brain and hit me all at once, demanding to be noticed as my consciousness returned. I wasn't sure if this was afterlife or not, but that theory quickly disproved itself as I felt my aches grow as I stirred.
> I opened my eyes and found myself in the lab, just where I stood before I was knocked out apparently. I still felt terrible pain as I go to my feet and looked around with a dazed sight. If anything, my plan worked only half-way, as my body confirmed that I was back in the land of the living. I wasn't quite sure what time it was, as our lab changed remarkably little over the years. The only missing thing were the Lutece bodies that were there not too long ago. I caught myself thinking in the past tense and laughed bitterly. I was truly mortal again, and it seemed that I was even further away from Robert than before.
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>If there was any consolation to be had from my current state of being, it was the fact that committing suicide in these circumstances would not require an elaborate procedure. Had my mind been any clearer, I would have been able to recognize the immense opportunity that I now could have exploited in my search for Robert. But I was mad with longing for him and I sought out a knife in our kitchen. I rushed into the room and turned over all cupboards and drawers, but those were empty. I ran for the main room and then upstairs, looking for a pair of sharp scissors or a letter-opener, but I could not find anything. I turned my mind to poison and considered the compounds and substances that we had in out lab. Those were gone too and my frustration was growing.
>I was angry, but not quite sure at what. I was denied my death, and my irrationality spiraled to new heights. How dare he leave me? How dare he deny me my death? The emotional torture was self-inflicted of course, but after being without contact of any kind for so long, even my introverted mind crumbled. I abandoned our desolate lab and got out onto the street. It was empty too and the dark sky was stained with red. The Emporia was devastated and red banners hung everywhere. Maybe Vox thugs will kill me, I thought and ran ahead. Then I stopped halfway in the middle of the square. They would rape me before shooting, I reflected, and suddenly death at their hand became much less appealing.
>Death lost its glamour once the difficulties started piling up. I was desperate to get rid of my longing for Robert but my own personality scoffed at anything drastic or prolonged. I wanted to end it quickly after all, and jumping off from the city or handing myself over to Vox would be a drawn out, torturous affair. However, jumping off from one of the buildings onto the pavement below would not be so long and the trauma would overwhelm me instantly. I rushed back into the lab and to the roof, where we often set up our apparatuses and measuring devices. I ran to the edge and stared down. I was never afraid of heights, but my own body shook and resisted as I saw the street below my feet. The downside of one's mortality was that instincts were terribly defensive of my mortal shell, inducing fear and vertigo as I stared down at the street. But I managed to put one foot in front of another and I fell over the edge, feeling the gravity for a brief few seconds as it dragged me down.
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>This time, I was awoken by blinding pain that hit me the moment my consciousness returned to me. I was still laying on the cobblestone of the street, however I was not in Emporia anymore. The blinding pain was replaced by blinding sun as I opened my eyes and staggered to my feet, aching all over and observed my surroundings. I was still in Columbia, with banners and balloons visible in the distance. The festive mood was somewhat dampened by a complete lack of any people celebrating, or any people whatsoever.
> I took my time to look at myself, and despite the wear and tear and my aches, my body was unharmed, and my clothes were pristine. Was I hallucinating about being mortal? I considered the possibility. Had I been alive, I would have been lying dead on a pavement in Emporia, my spirit departed from this world. However, the constant impulses sent to my brain by the nervous system drove home the point about physicality of my flesh and its damaged state which still escaped my sight. I felt utterly lost without a proper answer to even this question. Had I gone through with a more sane approach to my problem and considered the conundrum as an opportunity to glean more detail towards my search for Robert, a lot of my future problems would have been avoided.
>I could not control my feeling s however. I felt close to breaking down and crying, lost in my confusion. Even my own suicide was problematic and complete apathy and begun to creep up at the edge of my mind. As I was ready to drop to my knees and simply remain motionless for an eternity, I heard a lone voice somewhere in the distance. I was so eager for some sort of sign or contact, my mind so starved of any external input, all of my self-induced depression evaporated in a second as I ran in the direction of the voice across the sunny streets. I could not discern to whom the voice belonged to, but it didn't matter. I just had to find it.
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>As I got closer, the voice morphed into many, and soon enough I was hearing a happy crowd cheering and chanting in the distance. My heart beat faster and I rushed up the stairs through the park in the direction of the commotion. As I passed the decorated stalls and fair games, all were vacant of course, but the sounds of commotion and music were all-present. I got to the empty raffle square, with Fink on the stage, just as he did so every year. The noise, singing and cheering was as loud as one would expect during a festive day, had there been any people to sing. Fink stood in front of this invisible audience and led the song. As he saw me, his eyes glinted and he stopped to begin his raffle.
>He called in for the raffle to begin and continued to laugh merrily. I found it rather unsettling, since I never had any trust for the shifty salesman. There was no one around but I still heard the invisible crowd around me talking and picking up balls. Fink turned to me and asked 'What are you waiting for, pick a ball!" and I felt a nudge on the shoulder. It was one of the raffle girls, standing with a basket in front of me, waiting for me to get one. I took one out with a trembling hand and looked at the number: 77. Fink, in his typically jovial mood, asked for the bowl to be passed to him and the same girl now appeared on the stage next to him. Fink did not skip on his low-brow jokes and the invisible crowd laughed as he stuck his hand in the bowl to pick a winning number.
>I was somewhat worried, being forced to partake in this ghostly raffle, but I guessed that I could do no worse than Dewitt, with my acceptance of death as my default state of mind by now. Yet I hovered on the edge - despite several attempts I was no closer to release from existence, yet I was further and further away from Robert with each step. Fink called my number, and DeWitt's scenario was now playing out in front of me. Except, instead of a mock wedding march, the invisible crowd intoned Chopin's Requiem and the curtains slid to the side, revealing Fink's obnoxious associate, Flambeau, who carried a red cushion to Fink.
>When Fink saw the cushion, he motioned to me to join him on the stage, calling me out and repeating the number again. I took to the stage at his bidding and approached him, wavering. I was not sure what this whole spectacle was supposed to mean, but I was too dumbfounded to react or resist to anything then. There, I saw a plain knife on the cushion and Fink, without breaking his tone or mood picked it up with a flourish and plunged it in my chest. While he did not say anything, his ghastly grin was the last thing I saw as darkness enveloped me. Now, I considered my state and what transpired was certainly a hallucination, to the extent where both sensory and visual input clashed. Could have my emotional distress been great enough to jumble my thoughts and sensory nerves?
>Whether I was suffering from some form of intense emotional trauma or my probability state got severely disrupted after interaction with our contraption, the truly strange was yet to come. I woke up screaming and clutching my chest, this time my consciousness coming to me last after the pain subsided. I was laying on a cold stone floor and I could taste damp in the air. My vision was still blurry, so it took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust and what I saw was astounding. I stared mindlessly at the picture in front of me for a good minute. Behind wall of curved glass there was a city submerged in water.
>I managed to get to my feet and walked towards the glass wall, grabbing a railing with my unsteady hands. The place looked familiar enough, with some of the tears showing similar images, but it was never an object of my or Robert's interest. The city was full of bright lights and sings and I could see scores of fish and other sea creatures pass by. Thats when I heard a man and a woman talking. I turned my head and saw a pair, standing the railing, facing each other. The man just offered to light a cigarette for the woman and she accepted and gave the man a suggestive look. It took me a brief moment to realize who they were, in their strange clothes, but I could recognize their voices anywhere.
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>I was painfully aware that the experiment had ended with DeWitt being drowned and closing of the loop, but this was the last place I imagined seeing him or the girl. While now I am aware of the circumstances and the explanation for it, back then, I expected it to be nothing more than a delirium brought on by the emotional shock. A lot of what happened could be explained away by that but I prefer not to dwell on that time anymore. I was still coming to my full senses when I saw them but when I attempted to approach them, I caught something different in the corner of my eye. It was a head full of red hair. dressed in tan and I moved after him without thinking about it. DeWitt and the girl did not pay any attention to me of course and I set off after whom I assumed to be Robert.
> I followed him down the corridor and I almost tripped and fell several times, cursing my attire. Despite my pace, I lost him and found myself amidst the gleaming corridors of this underwater labyrinth. I felt helpless again and my tears were now welling up. It was a pathetic regression to the most base emotional state and by then I had lost any and all attitudes or composure that would befit a scientist or a sane person even. I let out a single whimper and then broke down completely in the empty corridor, slumping to my knees. I still dread to remind myself of this or the circumstances that broke me, but I would be foolish to deny my humanity at that moment or my big weakness that still remains with me.
>I don't remember how long I cried or when I fell asleep but I was not laying on cold floor anymore by the time I woke up. Instead, I felt sun and and sand and I groggily got up. I was surprised that the scenery changed without big trauma being inflicted on me, which immediately sparked my suspicions. Apparently a hearty emotional outburst was sufficient to clear some of the depression from my head as I begun assessing my surroundings with a bit more attention. It turned out that I was back in Columbia, at Battleship Bay, but just like before, the place was deserted. I decided that I could wait with change of scenery and put any further suicidal thoughts aside. MY death solved nothing apparently so another solution had to be found.
>Just as it was at the raffle square, I did not see anyone but still could hear whispers of conversations or people dancing on the pier. I wasn't sure that I could shift from there back to our lab and even less that I would end up in my desired location so I decided that getting there on foot was a preferable alternative. When I saw two people standing with cushions up ahead, I recalled one of the experiments that I did with Robert to test DeWitt. They stood in the exactly same spot as we did and held up something in their hands, but thats where similarities ended. It was Dewitt and the girl, apparently waiting for me and holding a pistol and large shears on the cushions, with unusually stoic faces.
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"Gun?"
"Or the shears?"
"Nothing beats the gun."
"One solid stab, you bleed out momentarily. Trust me, I used them before."
"One shot to the head and you are cold in a moment. Worked on every man I came across."
>As I approached them, I was greeted with a banter not unlike the one we served to them the last time. they looked ridiculous, aping our expressions and mannerisms, however I was in no state to laugh back then. Dewitt shoved his pistol at me with insistence that matched Robert, while the girl imitated my body language to a tee. They did not let me pass, forming a solid wall between me and the exit, dispelling my faint hope that they were figments of my deranged mind. Or maybe I was so deranged I felt they were real and blocking me from passing? I was shaking as I was forced to choose the tool of my own demise, except this time, I had no intention to die. I was running in circles and I had to do something and moreover, I saw Robert, back in that city.
>Compelled with a bizarre choice and unable to move forward, I hefted the pistol from the cushion. DeWitt was right about it being a far better way to go out, with a shot to the head inflicting the necessary trauma and damage to put me out completely without prolonged suffering. This is where new and different kind of worry begun eating at me. I was worried about not surviving this shot. whether my sighting of Robert was real or not, it was enough for me to go on and look for him, and a fear that my desperate wish would be granted this time made me tremble. As I picked up the pistol with a trembling hand, DeWitt gave me a weak smile and the girl glanced at me with a neutral expression. they certainly did not help and it took me a good while to muster some courage to lift the gun to my right temple. They were still there, still like statues and observing me. I briefly thought about turning the weapon in him, but something told me that would be a waste of time and that I would die anyway, albeit in a far more gruesome way.
>My hand was shaky as I set my finger on the trigger, cocked it and pulled. For a split second, my ears were filled with a deafening noise and I saw darkness. I was scared that the darkness would stay and that I would disappear, finally granted the wish which, I reflected, was not something one should desire. I can still recall how pathetic I was, how malleable to outside factors and a mere sight of him was able to change my entire mood.
The eternity in the darkness stretched uncomfortably and my conscious mind begun to rebel against itself, begging for input or some sort of stimulus. I was as close to hell as one could probably get, stuck in complete darkness, and with nothing but your thoughts, trapped in nothingness. The blackness begun to swallow my mind too, as I felt that I begun melting away into nothing bit by bit. Another of my ill-fated wishes now begun to come to life and my consciousness rebelled against the void too, calling for help from quarters unknown. but the call could not be answered and I was a powerless witness to my own demise. Yet that too stretched for an eternity, stuck in the mental agony of being somewhere and not feeling anything and then feeling that you are melting away into nothingness, as if my absence of sensation could be distinguish from absolute void. Yet there it was.
>A wave of water hit my face and shook me out of my dead stupor. I swallowed the bitter sea water and coughed as some got into my throat when I gasped for air. I was all wet and my clothes hung heavily to my body as I became aware of myself and my surroundings. despite the coughs and the awful taste of seawater, I felt immense relief and my mind reveled in the feeling of the material world. While I don't remember the ordeal we went though after our contraption was sabotaged, for some reason I recall every detail of this horrible experience. Apparently universe has a way of treating the law-breakers with vengeance once they try to sneak back to material reality. As I surveyed the scenery around me I felt water falling from the sky and tasted air, which was thick like soup. I was on the surface and the small hut next to a pier looked oddly familiar. This was the departure point for the lighthouse to Columbia, and the boat was marooned, while the hut itself was dark. There was no telling what time it was, but I had to get back to Columbia. Robert was out there somewhere and I still had a chance of finding him.
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>I bet Robert would have a good laugh out of seeing me in the boat, rowing on my own and soaked to the bone. My jacket weighed on me like a leaden coat and my hair spilled onto my face and back in a wet mess, now that I was out in full storm without any waterproof clothes. But I rowed, with a grimace on my face and dull aching in my muscles as I rowed through the stormy sea. I went through enough and this was a paltry obstacle in comparison with other problems I already faced. Nonetheless, the journey to the lighthouse was longer than previous rides, no doubt because Robert was a better rower and I was exhausted. The lighthouse slowly came into focus and its light guided me to the pier.
>I wondered briefly if this was still the same reality as the one to which I ported over initially in order to eliminate myself, but that would have little actual bearing on my search for Robert. The solution I came up with was remarkably simple but I was unable to realize it until very late, once I went over all the stages of fear and grief over my misfortune, which now seem to be nothing more than self-indulgent wailing. While I was unable to locate Robert by our normal probability means due to his apparent evasion and my foolishly induced half-state, I reasoned that our contraption would enable me to trace him and open a tear to precisely the place where I would find him, probability or not. I found him through an entangled particle at a time when the idea was a pure fantasy, so now it seemed to pose no challenge to me.
>My depression and subsequent hope have now evolved into determination and quiet loathing for Robert and his escape from me. I still did not know what guided him, but as the possibility of seeing him again grew, so my mind began setting itself against him. I was angry at myself too, for letting myself fall so much. I was so bound to him that now that I broke free of his influence, or so I thought, I could not contain my anger at him. I finally made it and got off the boat running straight for the tower. I got to the top and instead of the usual variation of the code, I rang my own sequence on the bells, hoping that the special access was still working, that the reality I found myself in was not changed form what I wanted. Fortunately, it worked and the capsule was prepared for flight to special access pad in Emporia near our lab. Our trips to the surface were rare if not completely non-existent during our tenure as chief city scientists, however we installed a special access route for ourselves that would allow us to circumvent that silly baptism chapel.
>Surely enough, after a short flight I found myself landing in Emporia and stepping out onto a sunny street. eerie silence and empty streets were just as they were before but I was not bothered by that anymore. Our lab was intact and I set myself upon setting up the contraption. I found Fink's sabotaged components and quickly changed them. It was Robert who did most of the heavy mechanical work in the lab, but it was me who designed the contraption so the repairs did not take me long. Setting it all up to open a tear to his location did not present any challenge either and after few hours, I was stepping through to a storm-battered coast. Half of me wanted to be surprised to see that I was back in Maine, but I knew those locations were tied inexplicably with us and Columbia. Maybe there was something I missed, or this was a different version of the same place on the shore.
>I did not hesitate to make the journey on boat again, but this time I brought a raincoat along. If Robert was in another Columbia I was about to Find him. Why did I not come up with that solution earlier? Loving is almost a substitute for thinking and I still cannot forgive myself for my lapse in judgment. But Robert knew well enough this would happen. If there is one thing I had to congratulate him on, it was him tricking me into all this. The lighthouse looked no different once I made my way to it for the second time. As I pushed the door open and stepped through however, I did not enter a lighthouse, but found myself outside another one, standing amidst a sea of many other lighthouses, a sunset coloring everything in deep orange.
>While seeing the end and witnessing the erasing of Columbia, I recalled the girl talk about a "Sea of Doors". She accessed the backstage of the reality and found a way to explore any and all points int time and probability. I was deeply intrigued by it at first but search for Robert sidelined that bit of information. It became apparent that Robert was interested in the phenomenon too, as the contraption led me here, rather than to any physical point in reality. Thats when the fear returned, as I was faced with infinity and among it, he was out there somewhere. I remained calm however. i made it here, I can make it to Robert. i was in no rush anymore. I marched on, with the walkway appearing in front of me out of water, leading me to a lighthouse just next to the one I came out of.
>As I went through it, I found myself facing another sea of lighthouses, their shape strange and angular, only this time the sky was dark and punctuated by dots of light, as the sea wrapped in on itself in a an infinite hollow sphere. Just ahead of me, on the stone walkway between lighthouses stood Robert. He looked unmoved and immaculate as always, head straight and hands behind his back, apparently expecting me. His expression was blank and I couldn't see him clearly until he took few steps forward and entered the circle of light created by the walkway lamp.
"Hello, dear sister."
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They stood on the stone walkway between the lighthouses, facing each other, several feet separating them. Robert was unmoved, and awaited Rosalind's reaction. despite a calm appearance, he swallowed hard. there was no telling whether she would lash out, break down or deliver him a verbal chastising the likes he was yet to hear. Of the all three possibilities, he feared the last one the most. He knew himself well enough to expect a vicious retribution for a trick he played on her.
"Hello, dear brother." Her voice was as calm and as level as his. She took her raincoat and hat off and dropped them on the ground before taking few steps forward. He matched her until they stood in front of each other.
"So, you finally found me."
"That I did."
I see the contraption is in working condition"
"That is it is. You found the place the girl was talking about."
"Indeed. Fascinating place, I must say."
" I can imagine."
They could carry on talking like that for hours, running circles like that. Robert hoped for nothing else, hoping that whatever grudge she was carrying would wear off in his presence.
"Why?" She asked him. Her voice was still calm although there was a hint of demand in it. She rarely used such voice with him and it was worrying.
"Experiment, dear sister. The one experiment to end them all."
Rosalind's face grew harder. "And you didn't bother telling me?" she hissed at him, her voice slow and deliberate now.
"There was a reason to it, Ros. The particle in question could not be interfered with, lest it affected the result."
"Are you saying you were testing me? That I was your particle?" Robert only said half of what he wanted to, but as usual Rosalind picked it up effortlessly. It did not stop the rage building up in her.
"I knew you will react ... a certain way, which was helpful for the experiment, but I did not expect it to go that far."Now his voice was shaking ever so slightly. There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to yield to her. He deserved it, but that did not mean he relished the idea.
He expected it to come but he did not expect it to come now or so suddenly. The slap made barely any sound across the infinite sea, but it was hard enough to leave Robert with a red cheek. He didn't dare to flinch or rub it.
"You... you.." Rosalind was clearly steaming with anger, barely able to keep herself in check as her eyes glinted dangerously at her male alter ego. She was not him at that moment however.
"You complete and utter BASTARD!" Rosalind understood perfectly well what Robert did and why he did it, but her heart was beating furiously as she screamed her face off at him. Her pent-up emotions reined over her now, released from the cold prison of logical mind.
"You left me and TORTURED ME! You treated me like a fool! ME, who built the contraption and who brought you over! I was building Columbia for Comstock while you fumbled around with that idiot Dewitt!" She thrust her finger at him, prodding him on the chest as she fired one charge after another.
"Rosalind, you know full well that a particle observed..."
"I even gave you my blood when you were bleeding from your nose like a fountain!"
She breather heavily as she let her hand drop, while Robert stood frozen in his spot.
"I found the zero-point constants." He said timidly.
"W-what?"
"I found them. All the same, across all the possibilities."
That information alone was enough to snap Rosalind out of her fury. The scientific mind now was back in control as she looked into her own eyes, trying to understand and see. "The lighthouses.." she said with understanding that was now growing.
"The man, and the city." Robert finished.
"But how?"
"I had to send you through, Ros." he reached feebly with his hand, unsure if he was in for another beating, but yearning to touch her regardless. The experiment took as much out of him as it did out of her, yet there was a chasm between them.
Rosalind's anger returned, now that she experienced the price extracted from her to pay for this knowledge. Rosalind and Robert Lutece were two different people now, divided by the experience inflicted upon one another.
"Do not touch me." she slapped his hand away. "And do not call me that. I might forgive you, how could I not. But I will never forget. Ever." She was still angry and glaring at him, yet something else was now bubbling up and raising to the surface.
Rosalind let out a single sob as she felt her eyes grow hot. Then another, and another followed. The staccato of her sobs mixed with tears as she put all of her composure to hold herself back, all in vain. She covered her mouth with her hand, still hopelessly fighting her tears as she dropped her head to look at her feet. She felt a pair of hands on her arms and looked up to see Robert break his passionless face, giving her a heartfelt smile, with the red cheek still visible. He embraced her slowly and pressed to his chest as she finally let go of herself.
They stood among the sea of infinite doors like that for a long time, getting back what one of them thought was gone forever.

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>When Robert leaves her, Rosalind feels that she's going insane. Constants begin acting like variables and nothing seems real. 


>"When Robert left me after our latest failure in measuring the true reason behind DeWitt's inability to escape obvious constants (the telegram we sent him was useless), I became quite concerned. While he excused himself in saying that he came up with an experiment that would solve some of the issues we have been facing lately in measuring DeWitt, the fact that he did not tell me what he had in mind was worrisome in itself.
>In my search for Robert I began revisiting some of the locations related to the experiment and decided to run some of the test myself. The results were... astounding. I decided to visit DeWitt #101, who so far showed little difference from others, save for the fact that he lasted against Songbird for just a while longer than any other before he died. His coin came up as tails.

>The result of the test needed repeating and I was stuck for quite long time trying to recreate the exact conditions of the experiment with another Booker DeWitt, #102, who did not differ and his coin came up as heads. However, this Booker actually heeded the telegram and was playing around with his choice of a ball before he picked number 102.

>The results from other sites kept showing anomalies, even though initial conditions continued to remain the same throughout. I still couldn't find Robert at any of the locations and my earlier worry turned into desperation.
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>While I normally pride myself on the attitude of a scientist, with a demeanor and composure that is conducive to rational observation, Robert’s absence brought out unusual sense of anxiety that I found hard to suppress. Of course, test results kept bringing up further anomalies, and that only compounded my fears. Fear is an irrational response to the unknown, and despite my current predicament, where I was stretched and scattered among probability space meant that I should have nothing to worry about. Yet I knew nothing about Robert’s whereabouts or the reason behind fluctuations in the test results.

>It would be easy enough to dismiss them as outliers, yet they broke the pattern and undermined our theory of constants and variables. I postulated to myself that while it was possible to draw a connection between Robert’s absence during testing as an element that was affecting the results, I chided myself for assuming that his presence would affect the outcome. Its not the amount of observers that matter, but the observation. Yet my mind was growing desperate for a result that would answer Robert’s disappearance. 

>To look in the mirror and to look at yourself were two different things, because mirror is only a reflection, while Robert was more than an image. He was me. Its hard to describe the situation and feeling of being in your own presence when there was no other person that has experienced the same. We used to finish each other’s sentences, we complimented each other in various tasks, it was an experience unlike any other. The fear that I might not experience that ever again filled me with dread that began to interfere with my ability to work.
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>But fear and anxiety that appeared in my mind were nothing next to confusion that I could not resolve. I felt helpless. Helpless in explaining the anomalies, helpless in inability to find Robert, and worst of all, helpless in holding back my emotions. So I did the only thing I could so and threw myself into a flurry of tests, both empirical and theoretical. Being scattered across probability space meant that physical and time constraints were a non-issue in reworking and redoing all of my and Robert’s work when we were still alive. I had to find an answer.

>Nonetheless, the tests did not produce any satisfactory results. With the complete collapse of our hypothesis on constants and variables, the anomalies remained unexplained and my confusion only grew. DeWitt seemed unhinged from any quantum event and ran through obstacles that previously killed him or did things that ended his journey while they were a non-factor before. 

>I was at a loss. I did not feel like that ever since I was a child; my assumed knowledge in the field and my state of being gave me confidence that now evaporated in face of the unexplainable. My frustration became greater and my longing for Robert became almost like an illness. But this is where a true horror started. In these new circumstance, the anomalies became universal and the whole spectrum of the probability space became one big variable. Shortly after, I encountered DeWitt #123 - and witnessed his end. Not only he still conformed to the old probability model, but he defeated the odds and saved the girl. He did that by erasing her and himself, and in effect ending Columbia permanently. Yet I was still present in my scattered state.
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>I felt my sanity slip as I ran out of solutions. My impotence grew despite my abilities. I have forsaken any further detailed experimentation and begun a frantic search for Robert across all probabilities: New York, Columbia, even Maine and London, all without connection and sequence, simply going where my mind expected him to be. Was it possible that he was gone, just like DeWitt #123? But where would he be gone to? Back in his own reality? Erased from time-space completely as the paradox resolved itself? Why was I still here? These and more thoughts raced though my mind, pursuing me and driving home fact that I was alone. 

>Why would he leave me? My rationality eroded and instead of asking questions about the change of variables and trying to answer them, I was overwhelmed by my feelings, trapped in a spiral of despair. Gone was the demeanor of a scientist and in its place appeared a broken woman.  My whole personality and mind were bent out of shape and subject to self-inflicted torture, all because I was addicted to my male self. And even though he was me, I could not fathom a reason behind his disappearance or an experiment that would enable him to measure DeWitt.

>Several weeks have passed (or at least an equivalent of those, I did not track passage of time before, let alone needed it) since Robert disappeared when another dreadful feeling overcame me. Resignation after so many tries and failures, my growing confusion and Robert's absence, and the complete chaos that I begun experiencing when crossing from one probability to another took toll on my already weakened psyche. I could not hold back the void that started to fill my heart. 

>Thinking back on my state back then, behaving like a desperate lunatic, I can't help but shudder with embarrassment and vow to myself that this would not happen again. I ceased observing the variables and didn't bother tracing their entanglement, and that required collected mind. But back then, I was not myself. I was looking for myself and it drove me ot the insanity i still shudder to recall. It was then when I decided could not deal with it anymore.

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>I could not live like that anymore, if 'life' was the proper word for my current predicament. How does one deal with this problem while having having their life functions terminated already? Technically I died once already when our contraption was sabotaged. The side effect resulted in our current state and there was little in explaining why it happened. However, Robert and I never preoccupied ourselves with why's but rather with how's and when's. Was our state of being a constant or a variable? Constants seemed difficult to explain and something that arbitrarily defied probabilities begged a theistic explanation of the quantum theory, but with a complete collapse of constants, God ceased to be a viable explanation. Thats when it struck me. If constants ceased to be, there must have been a universe where sabotage of the contraption did not work or where the contraption did not result in us scattering but simply snuffed out lives. It was a perspective which I embraced wholeheartedly. All I had to do was to find that moment.

>I knew our lab in Columbia would remain untouched, partially because it scared the lesser minds away and partially because Fink and Comstock were still deriving some use from it. There was a probability that the lab might have been dismantled, but that was the least of my worries. All that remained was finding the right place and the right time.I suspected that the contraption would remain rigged and charged for some time after our deaths, several hours to several a day at most. But it was probably that final charge that kept the machine up and ensured our scattering. All I had to do was to discharge it once I found myself back in the lab and I would be gone. Was I worried about adding a third Lutece to the bodies lying in the lab? It didn't matter without Robert. 

>When I appeared back in our lab shortly after we expired, I still could smell the ether and ozone of the contraption as it discharged itself over and over, our lifeless corpses still laying close to it. Despite being fully aware of he situation, it still felt odd to stare at my dead self. But I was already far gone in my depression and longing for Robert, and the sight of his lifeless body brought me to tears. But I restrained myself from pointless mourning or self-pity over his expired body. My despair drove me to one thing only. The contraption was still charged and it held enough power to jolt me out of my singularity and turn me into a pile of mortified flesh. It was amazing that I put far more organized thought into my own death than in restraining myself or trying to figure out Robert's purposed experiment.
I grabbed hold of the lever and pulled.

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>I did not quite know what to expect. When I fell victim to machine's sabotage the first time, I didn't recall many details apart form painful electric shock that was powerful enough to kill me. I only gave a brief thought to this as I stood there, counting minutes and seconds as I saw my hand pull the lever down. It was a strange thing, that the closer I came to act irrationally, the more I felt alive and corporeal. I while I transplanted the entanglement onto a larger scale of the events that surrounded my expiration, I did not even consider to explore the issue fully. This was merely a hasty non-solution to my hysteria over Robert. While its easy to laugh at it now, back then I felt distress that I have not felt before in my life. Extraordinary problems demand extraordinary solutions, I rationalized it to myself as the lever went down and a powerful arc hit me. A brief flash of light and the darkness enveloped me.

>this felt much better, I thought to myself, with complete nothingness that surrounded me. I did not have to worry about not seeing Robert anymore... and that when I realized I was still worried. The realization that I was still self-aware and thinking followed soon after and another bout of panic and confusion swept over my mind. For someone who was technically omniscient my suicide attempt appeared sloppy. But I did not feel omniscient anymore, and after what felt like hours of panic and terror in the dark, I started feeling something. It was a headache. What followed was immense exhaustion as my bodily awareness and motor skills swarmed and in my brain and hit me all at once, demanding to be noticed as my consciousness returned. I wasn't sure if this was afterlife or not, but that theory quickly disproved itself as I felt my aches grow as I stirred. 

> I opened my eyes and found myself in the lab, just where I stood before I was knocked out apparently. I still felt terrible pain as I go to my feet and looked around with a dazed sight. If anything, my plan worked only half-way, as my body confirmed that I was back in the land of the living. I wasn't quite sure what time it was, as our lab changed remarkably little over the years. The only missing thing were the Lutece bodies that were there not too long ago. I caught myself thinking in the past tense and laughed bitterly. I was truly mortal again, and it seemed that I was even further away from Robert than before.

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>If there was any consolation to be had from my current state of being, it was the fact that committing suicide in these circumstances would not require an elaborate procedure. Had my mind been any clearer, I would have been able to recognize the immense opportunity that I now could have exploited in my search for Robert. But I was mad with longing for him and I sought out a knife in our kitchen. I rushed into the room and turned over all cupboards and drawers, but those were empty. I ran for the main room and then upstairs, looking for a pair of sharp scissors or a letter-opener, but I could not find anything. I turned my mind to poison and considered the compounds and substances that we had in out lab. Those were gone too and my frustration was growing.  

>I was angry, but not quite sure at what. I was denied my death, and my irrationality spiraled to new heights. How dare he leave me? How dare he deny me my death? The emotional torture was self-inflicted of course, but after being without contact of any kind for so long, even my introverted mind crumbled. I abandoned our desolate lab and got out onto the street. It was empty too and the dark sky was stained with red. The Emporia was devastated and red banners hung everywhere. Maybe Vox thugs will kill me, I thought and ran ahead. Then I stopped halfway in the middle of the square. They would rape me before shooting, I reflected, and suddenly death at their hand became much less appealing.   

>Death lost its glamour once the difficulties started piling up. I was desperate to get rid of my longing for Robert but my own personality scoffed at anything drastic or prolonged. I wanted to end it quickly after all, and jumping off from the city or handing myself over to Vox would be a drawn out, torturous affair. However, jumping off from one of the buildings onto the pavement below would not be so long and the trauma would overwhelm me instantly. I rushed back into the lab and to the roof, where we often set up our apparatuses and measuring devices. I ran to the edge and stared down. I was never afraid of heights, but my own body shook and resisted as I saw the street below my feet. The downside of one's mortality was that instincts were terribly defensive of my mortal shell, inducing fear and vertigo as I stared down at the street. But I managed to put one foot in front of another and I fell over the edge, feeling the gravity for a brief few seconds as it dragged me down.

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>This time, I was awoken by blinding pain that hit me the moment my consciousness returned to me. I was still laying on the cobblestone of the street, however I was not in Emporia anymore. The blinding pain was replaced by blinding sun as I opened my eyes and staggered to my feet, aching all over and observed my surroundings. I was still in Columbia, with banners and balloons visible in the distance. The festive mood was somewhat dampened by a complete lack of any people celebrating, or any people whatsoever.

> I took my time to look at myself, and despite the wear and tear and my aches, my body was unharmed, and my clothes were pristine. Was I hallucinating about being mortal? I considered the possibility. Had I been alive, I would have been lying dead on a pavement in Emporia, my spirit departed from this world. However, the constant impulses sent to my brain by the nervous system drove home the point about physicality of my flesh and its damaged state which still escaped my sight. I felt utterly lost without a proper answer to even this question. Had I gone through with a more sane approach to my problem and considered the conundrum as an opportunity to glean more detail towards my search for Robert, a lot of my future problems would have been avoided.

>I could not control my feeling s however. I felt close to breaking down and crying, lost in my confusion. Even my own suicide was problematic and complete apathy and begun to creep up at the edge of my mind. As I was ready to drop to my knees and simply remain motionless for an eternity, I heard a lone voice somewhere in the distance. I was so eager for some sort of sign or contact, my mind so starved of any external input, all of my self-induced depression evaporated in a second as I ran in the direction of the voice across  the sunny streets. I could not discern to whom the voice belonged to, but it didn't matter. I just had to find it.

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>As I got closer, the voice morphed into many, and soon enough I was hearing a happy crowd cheering and chanting in the distance. My heart beat faster and I rushed up the stairs through the park in the direction of the commotion. As I passed the decorated stalls and fair games, all were vacant of course, but the sounds of commotion and music were all-present. I got to the empty raffle square, with Fink on the stage, just as he did so every year. The noise, singing and cheering was as loud as one would expect during a festive day, had there been any people to sing. Fink stood in front of this invisible audience and led the song. As he saw me, his eyes glinted and he stopped to begin his raffle.

>He called in for the raffle to begin and continued to laugh merrily. I found it rather unsettling, since I never had any trust for the shifty salesman. There was no one around but I still heard the invisible crowd around me  talking and picking up balls. Fink turned to me and asked 'What are you waiting for, pick a ball!" and I felt a nudge on the shoulder. It was one of the raffle girls, standing with a basket in front of me, waiting for me to get one. I took one out with a trembling hand and looked at the number: 77. Fink, in his typically jovial mood, asked for the bowl to be passed to him and the same girl now appeared on the stage next to him. Fink did not skip on his low-brow jokes and the invisible crowd laughed as he stuck his hand in the bowl to pick a winning number. 

>I was somewhat worried, being forced to partake in this ghostly raffle, but I guessed that I could do no worse than Dewitt, with my acceptance of death as my default state of mind by now. Yet I hovered on the edge - despite several attempts I was no closer to release from existence, yet I was further and further away from Robert with each step. Fink called my number, and DeWitt's scenario was now playing out in front of me. Except, instead of a mock wedding march, the invisible crowd intoned Chopin's Requiem and the curtains slid to the side, revealing Fink's obnoxious associate, Flambeau, who carried a red cushion to Fink.

>When Fink saw the cushion, he motioned to me to join him on the stage, calling me out and repeating the number again. I took to the stage at his bidding and approached him, wavering. I was not sure what this whole spectacle was supposed to mean, but I was too dumbfounded to react or resist to anything then. There, I saw a plain knife on the cushion and Fink, without breaking his tone or mood picked it up with a flourish and plunged it in my chest. While he did not say anything, his ghastly grin was the last thing I saw as darkness enveloped me. Now, I considered my state and what transpired was certainly a hallucination, to the extent where both sensory and visual input clashed. Could have my emotional distress been great enough to jumble my thoughts and sensory nerves?

>Whether I was suffering from some form of intense emotional trauma or my probability state got severely disrupted after interaction with our contraption, the truly strange was yet to come. I woke up screaming and clutching my chest, this time my consciousness coming to me last after the pain subsided. I was laying on a cold stone floor and I could taste damp in the air. My vision was still blurry, so it took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust and what I saw was astounding. I stared mindlessly at the picture in front of me for a good minute. Behind wall of curved glass there was a city submerged in water.

>I managed to get to my feet and walked towards the glass wall, grabbing a railing with my unsteady hands. The place looked familiar enough, with some of the tears showing similar images, but it was never an object of my or Robert's interest. The city was full of bright lights and sings and I could see scores of fish and other sea creatures pass by. Thats when I heard a man and a woman talking. I turned my head and saw  a pair, standing  the railing, facing each other. The man just offered to light a cigarette for the woman and she accepted and gave the man a suggestive look. It took me a brief moment to realize who they were, in their strange clothes, but I could recognize their voices anywhere.

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>I was painfully aware that the experiment had ended with DeWitt being drowned and closing of the loop, but this was the last place I imagined seeing him or the girl. While now I am aware of the circumstances and the explanation for it, back then, I expected it to be nothing more than a delirium brought on by the emotional shock. A lot of what happened could be explained away by that but I prefer not to dwell on that time anymore. I was still coming to my full senses when I saw them but when I attempted to approach them, I caught something different in the corner of my eye. It was a head full of red hair. dressed in tan and I moved after him without thinking about it. DeWitt and the girl did not pay any attention to me of course and I set off after whom I assumed to be Robert.

> I followed him down the corridor and I almost tripped and fell several times, cursing my attire. Despite my pace, I lost him and found myself amidst the gleaming corridors of this underwater labyrinth. I felt helpless again and my tears were now welling up. It was a pathetic regression to the most base emotional state and by then I had lost any and all attitudes or composure that would befit a scientist or a sane person even. I let out a single whimper and then broke down completely in the empty corridor, slumping to my knees. I still dread to remind myself of this or the circumstances that broke me, but I would be foolish to deny my humanity at that moment or my big weakness that still remains with me. 

>I don't remember how long I cried or when I fell asleep but I was not laying on cold floor anymore by the time I woke up. Instead, I felt sun and and sand and I groggily got up. I was surprised that the scenery changed without big trauma being inflicted on me, which immediately sparked my suspicions. Apparently a hearty emotional outburst was sufficient to clear some of the depression from my head as I begun assessing my surroundings with a bit more attention. It turned out that I was back in Columbia, at Battleship Bay, but just like before, the place was deserted. I decided that I could wait with change of scenery and put any further suicidal thoughts aside. MY death solved nothing apparently so another solution had to be found. 

>Just as it was at the raffle square, I did not see anyone but still could hear whispers of conversations or people dancing on the pier. I wasn't sure that I could shift from there back to our lab and even less that I would end up in my desired location so I decided that getting there on foot was a preferable alternative. When I saw two people standing with cushions up ahead, I recalled one of the experiments that I did with Robert to test DeWitt. They stood in the exactly same spot as we did and held up something in their hands, but thats where similarities ended. It was Dewitt and the girl, apparently waiting for me and holding a pistol and large shears on the cushions, with unusually stoic faces. 

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"Gun?"
"Or the shears?"
"Nothing beats the gun."
"One solid stab, you bleed out momentarily. Trust me, I used them before."
"One shot to the head and you are cold in a moment. Worked on every man I came across."
>As I approached them, I was greeted with a banter not unlike the one we served to them the last time. they looked ridiculous, aping our expressions and mannerisms, however I was in no state to laugh back then. Dewitt shoved his pistol at me with insistence that matched Robert, while the girl imitated my body language to a tee. They did not let me pass, forming a solid wall between me and the exit, dispelling my faint hope that they were figments of my deranged mind. Or maybe I was so deranged I felt they were real and blocking me from passing? I was shaking as I was forced to choose the tool of my own demise, except this time, I had no intention to die. I was running in circles and I had to do something and moreover, I saw Robert, back in that city.

>Compelled with a bizarre choice and unable to move forward, I hefted the pistol from the cushion. DeWitt was right about it being a far better way to go out, with a shot to the head inflicting the necessary trauma and damage to put me out completely without prolonged suffering. This is where new and different kind of worry begun eating at me. I was worried about not surviving this shot. whether my sighting of Robert was real or not, it was enough for me to go on and look for him, and a fear that my desperate wish would be granted this time made me tremble. As I picked up the pistol with a trembling hand, DeWitt gave me a weak smile and the girl glanced at me with a neutral expression. they certainly did not help and it took me a good while to muster some courage to lift the gun to my right temple. They were still there, still like statues and observing me. I briefly thought about turning the weapon in him, but something told me that would be a waste of time and that I would die anyway, albeit in a far more gruesome way. 

>My hand was shaky as I set my finger on the trigger, cocked it and pulled. For a split second, my ears were filled with a deafening noise and I saw darkness. I was scared that the darkness would stay and that I would disappear, finally granted the wish which, I reflected, was not something one should desire. I can still recall how pathetic I was, how malleable to outside factors and a mere sight of him was able to change my entire mood.
The eternity in the darkness stretched uncomfortably and my conscious mind begun to rebel against itself, begging for input or some sort of stimulus. I was as close to hell as one could probably get, stuck in complete darkness, and with nothing but your thoughts, trapped in nothingness. The blackness begun to swallow my mind too, as I felt that I begun melting away into nothing bit by bit. Another of my ill-fated wishes now begun to come to life and my consciousness rebelled against the void too, calling for help from quarters unknown. but the call could not be answered and I was a powerless witness to my own demise. Yet that too stretched for an eternity, stuck in the mental agony of being somewhere and not feeling anything and then feeling that you are melting away into nothingness, as if my absence of sensation could be distinguish from absolute void. Yet there it was. 

>A wave of water hit my face and shook me out of my dead stupor. I swallowed the bitter sea water and coughed as some got into my throat when I gasped for air. I was all wet and my clothes hung heavily to my body as I became aware of myself and my surroundings. despite the coughs and the awful taste of seawater, I felt immense relief and my mind reveled in the feeling of the material world. While I don't remember the ordeal we went though after our contraption was sabotaged, for some reason I recall every detail of this horrible experience. Apparently universe has a way of treating the law-breakers with vengeance once they try to sneak back to material reality. As I surveyed the scenery around me I felt water falling from the sky and tasted air, which was thick like soup. I was on the surface and the small hut next to a pier looked oddly familiar. This was the departure point for the lighthouse to Columbia, and the boat was marooned, while the hut itself was dark. There was no telling what time it was, but I had to get back to Columbia. Robert was out there somewhere and I still had a chance of finding him.

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>I bet Robert would have a good laugh out of seeing me in the boat, rowing on my own and soaked to the bone. My jacket weighed on me like a leaden coat and my hair spilled onto my face and back in a wet mess, now that I was out in full storm without any waterproof clothes. But I rowed, with a grimace on my face and dull aching in my muscles as I rowed through the stormy sea. I went through enough and this was a paltry obstacle in comparison with other problems I already faced. Nonetheless, the journey to the lighthouse was longer than previous rides, no doubt because Robert was a better rower and I was exhausted. The lighthouse slowly came into focus and its light guided me to the pier. 

>I wondered briefly if this was still the same reality as the one to which I ported over initially in order to eliminate myself, but that would have little actual bearing on my search for Robert. The solution I came up with was remarkably simple but I was unable to realize it until very late, once I went over all the stages of fear and grief over my misfortune, which now seem to be nothing more than self-indulgent wailing. While I was unable to locate Robert by our normal probability means due to his apparent evasion and my foolishly induced half-state, I reasoned that our contraption would enable me to trace him and open a tear to precisely the place where I would find him, probability or not. I found him through an entangled particle at a time when the idea was a pure fantasy, so now it seemed to pose no challenge to me. 

 >My depression and subsequent hope have now evolved into determination and quiet loathing for Robert and his escape from me. I still did not know what guided him, but as the possibility of seeing him again grew, so my mind began setting itself against him. I was angry at myself too, for letting myself fall so much. I was so bound to him that now that I broke free of his influence, or so I thought, I could not contain my anger at him. I finally made it and got off the boat running straight for the tower. I got to the top and instead of the usual variation of the code, I rang my own sequence on the bells, hoping that the special access was still working, that the reality I found myself in was not changed form what I wanted. Fortunately, it worked and the capsule was prepared for flight to special access pad in Emporia near our lab. Our trips to the surface were rare if not completely non-existent during our tenure as chief city scientists, however we installed a special access route for ourselves that would allow us to circumvent that silly baptism chapel. 

>Surely enough, after a short flight I found myself landing in Emporia and stepping out onto a sunny street. eerie silence and empty streets were just as they were before but I was not bothered by that anymore. Our lab was intact and I set myself upon setting up the contraption. I found Fink's sabotaged components and quickly changed them. It was Robert who did most of the heavy mechanical work in the lab, but it was me who designed the contraption so the repairs did not take me long. Setting it all up to open a tear to his location did not present any challenge either and after few hours, I was stepping through to a storm-battered coast. Half of me wanted to be surprised to see that I was back in Maine, but I knew those locations were tied inexplicably with us and Columbia. Maybe there was something I missed, or this was a different version of the same place on the shore. 

>I did not hesitate to make the journey on boat again, but this time I brought a raincoat along. If Robert was in another Columbia I was about to Find him. Why did I not come up with that solution earlier? Loving is almost a substitute for thinking and I still cannot forgive myself for my lapse in judgment. But Robert knew well enough this would happen. If there is one thing I had to congratulate him on, it was him tricking me into all this. The lighthouse looked no different once I made my way  to it for the second time. As I pushed the door open and stepped through however, I did not enter a lighthouse, but found myself outside another one, standing amidst a sea of many other lighthouses, a sunset coloring everything in deep orange. 

>While seeing the end and witnessing the erasing of Columbia, I recalled the girl talk about a "Sea of Doors". She accessed the backstage of the reality and found a way to explore any and all points int time and probability. I was deeply intrigued by it at first but search for Robert sidelined that bit of information. It became apparent that Robert was interested in the phenomenon too, as the contraption led me here, rather than to any physical point in reality. Thats when the fear returned, as I was faced with infinity and among it, he was out there somewhere. I remained calm however. i made it here, I can make it to Robert. i was in no rush anymore. I marched on, with the walkway appearing in front of me out of water, leading me to a lighthouse just next to the one I came out of. 

>As I went through it, I found myself facing another sea of lighthouses, their shape strange and angular, only this time the sky was dark and punctuated by dots of light, as the sea wrapped in on itself in a an infinite hollow sphere. Just ahead of me, on the stone walkway between lighthouses stood Robert. He looked unmoved and immaculate as always, head straight and hands behind his back, apparently expecting me. His expression was blank and I couldn't see him clearly until he took few steps forward and entered the circle of light created by the walkway lamp.
"Hello, dear sister."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

They stood on the stone walkway between the lighthouses, facing each other, several feet separating them. Robert was unmoved, and awaited Rosalind's reaction. despite a calm appearance, he swallowed hard. there was no telling whether she would lash out, break down or deliver him a verbal chastising the likes he was yet to hear. Of the all three possibilities, he feared the last one the most. He knew himself well enough to expect a vicious retribution for a trick he played on her. 

"Hello, dear brother." Her voice was as calm and as level as his. She took her raincoat and hat off and dropped them on the ground before taking few steps forward. He matched her until they stood in front of each other. 
"So, you finally found me." 
"That I did."
I see the contraption is in working condition"
"That is it is. You found the place the girl was talking about."
"Indeed. Fascinating place, I must say."
" I can imagine."
They could carry on talking like that for hours, running circles like that. Robert hoped for nothing else, hoping that whatever grudge she was carrying would wear off in his presence. 
"Why?" She asked him. Her voice was still calm although there was a hint of demand in it. She rarely used such voice with him and it was worrying.
"Experiment, dear sister. The one experiment to end them all." 
Rosalind's face grew harder. "And you didn't bother telling me?" she hissed at him, her voice slow and deliberate now.
"There was a reason to it, Ros. The particle in question could not be interfered with, lest it affected the result."
"Are you saying you were testing me? That I was your particle?" Robert only said half of what he wanted to, but as usual Rosalind picked it up effortlessly. It did not stop the rage building up in her.
"I knew you will react ... a certain way, which was helpful for the experiment, but I did not expect it to go that far."Now his voice was shaking ever so slightly. There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to yield to her. He deserved it, but that did not mean he relished the idea.

He expected it to come but he did not expect it to come now or so suddenly. The slap made barely any sound across the infinite sea, but it was hard enough to leave Robert with a red cheek. He didn't dare to flinch or rub it.
"You... you.." Rosalind was clearly steaming with anger, barely able to keep herself in check as her eyes glinted dangerously at her male alter ego. She was not him at that moment however.
"You complete and utter BASTARD!" Rosalind understood perfectly well what Robert did and why he did it, but her heart was beating furiously as she screamed her face off at him. Her pent-up emotions reined over her now, released from the cold prison of logical mind.
"You left me and TORTURED ME! You treated me like a fool! ME, who built the contraption and who brought you over! I was building Columbia for Comstock while you fumbled around with that idiot Dewitt!" She thrust her finger at him, prodding him on the chest as she fired one charge after another.
"Rosalind, you know full well that a particle observed..."
"I even gave you my blood when you were bleeding from your nose like a fountain!"
She breather heavily as she let her hand drop, while Robert stood frozen in his spot. 

"I found the zero-point constants." He said timidly.
"W-what?"
"I found them. All the same, across all the possibilities."
That information alone was enough to snap Rosalind out of her fury. The scientific mind now was back in control as she looked into her own eyes, trying to understand and see. "The lighthouses.." she said with understanding that was now growing.
"The man, and the city." Robert finished.
"But how?" 
"I had to send you through, Ros." he reached feebly with his hand, unsure if he was in for another beating, but yearning to touch her regardless. The experiment took as much out of him as it did out of her, yet there was a chasm between them.

Rosalind's anger returned, now that she experienced the price extracted from her to pay for this knowledge. Rosalind and Robert Lutece were two different people now, divided by the experience inflicted upon one another.
"Do not touch me." she slapped his hand away. "And do not call me that. I might forgive you, how could I not. But I will never forget. Ever." She was still angry and glaring at him, yet something else was now bubbling up and raising to the surface. 
Rosalind let out a single sob as she felt her eyes grow hot. Then another, and another followed. The staccato of her sobs mixed with tears as she put all of her composure to hold herself back, all in vain. She covered her mouth with her hand, still hopelessly fighting her tears as she dropped her head to look at her feet. She felt a pair of hands on her arms and looked up to see Robert break his passionless face, giving her a heartfelt smile, with the red cheek still visible. He embraced her slowly and pressed to his chest as she finally let go of herself.
They stood among the sea of infinite doors like that for a long time, getting back what one of them thought was gone forever.

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