Rooney Travers

‘One more book about a dysfunctional boy with strange powers who saves the world.’

‘Well, if you don’t like them, why do you keep reading?’

‘I can’t help myself, mom, they just take a hold on me.’

‘Are you taking it or not? ‘Cause if you aren’t we’d better find some replacement fast. If your father reaches us before we reach the cashier there will be no books for you and me both.’

‘Ok, I’ll take this one. But, say I don’t like it much, can we come back later and get a new one?’

And there was the smile that made me feel the world could end and I’d still be safe.

There it was, the very best thing about my mother: her total lack of account towards my father. Once I overheard her talking to our nosy neighbour saying he’s a wonderful husband, but a lousy father. Curiously enough, the very same week I overheard nanna Amber complaining my mother was an okay mother, but a lousy wife to her son. I, on the other hand, learnt early enough to take (maybe I should say make) the best of both my parents.

You see, when my mom’s and my dad’s blood collided they caused an effect that made me the unluckiest guy you’ve ever heard of. I have no one to blame but my father. Or maybe my mother.

About seventeen years ago my father and his best friend ‘accidentally’ invented a machine that would allow him to travel across the multiverse. Don’t think about any kind of big heavy machinery, I’m talking about my dad’s snake necklace. It’s actually very beautiful and at first sight it makes you think it’s nothing but a cheap brass chain, but it glowed like nothing in this planet under the right light. But of course it’d glow like nothing in this planet, we lack the material.

Long story short, it was a real shock to my father to discover that the first planet he’d arrive upon would be crowded with humans just like his own, but he found the best consolation a single stranded man could find: a girl. Yup, that’s my mother I’m talking about, so you’d better show some respect here.

The thing is, according to the laws of the multiverse: travelling between worlds, okay. Walking, breathing, eating in other worlds, okay. Meeting people from other worlds, falling in love with them and marrying them, okay. Having a baby, really not okay.

They say it was a real shock to mum and dad. Once, shortly after they, er… you know… did what married people do, mom started to vanish into dust. Not the effect you want to cause to a girl, huh? Anyway, dad jumped into the multiverse void and started looking for mom. He did find her all right, three hundred years before she was even born. And that was when mom found out she was pregnant and that carrying a baby from anyone from a different world caused you to be unable to hold yourself in your planet. Or any planet. Mom said those were the hardest nine months of her life, her and dad actually lived in the multiverse void, protected by his snake necklace, until I was born and she no longer carried another planet’s blood inside her body.

Do you see how unlucky I am now? I am such a bad and strong paradox that my dad had to create my own snake necklace, which I can’t even dream to take it off. And the worst is, although I’m human like mom, dad and even you, everything I have double is split. I know it’s awesome to need no air adaptation in both planets, but each one of my eyes see a different planet. All the time.

In due time, it was always easy for me to find any one of my parents, no matter in which planet they happen to be and that’s how I settled my decision to buy that book I would certainly forget to read.

‘He’s finished hunting’ I told mom, seeing my father through my right eye. ‘He’ll now just pack up and take dinner home before he comes pick us up. Let’s hurry.’

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