Tales from the Universe
Moral Dilemma: If you could escape the life you cannot bear by giving it to someone who willingly accepts the trade, is that freedom—or does consent become complicated when neither person truly understands what the other’s life costs?
Ren wanted Toma’s life.
Not metaphorically.
Eventually.
But it began metaphorically.
Everyone wanted Toma’s life.
Toma was beautiful.
Not unusually handsome.
Beautiful.
The kind of face painters asked to borrow.
He had money.
Not obscene wealth.
Enough that broken shoes were annoying rather than frightening.
He had a large house.
Healthy parents.
Friends everywhere.
And an irritating ability to enter a room as though the room had been waiting for him.
Ren disliked him immediately.
Ren repaired roofs.
He lived with his father.
His father coughed constantly.
The medicine was expensive.
The roof leaked.
This was professionally humiliating.
Ren knew exactly how to repair it.
He simply spent his days repairing everyone else’s.
By evening, he was exhausted.
Whenever rain entered the kitchen, his father put a bucket underneath.
“Tomorrow.”
Ren always said.
His father always answered:
“Of course.”
Then Ren fell.
Three stories.
A rope caught him.
He survived.
Afterward, heights became impossible.
This was inconvenient for a roofer.
He tried.
Climbed ladders.
Reached the second story.
Hands shaking.
Vision narrowing.
Breath gone.
He would descend furious with himself.
His employer eventually said:
“I can’t keep paying you.”
Ren understood.
That made it worse.
Toma, meanwhile, performed music.
People paid to hear him.
Ren saw him one afternoon outside a café.
Toma played three songs.
People applauded.
Someone handed him enough money to cover two weeks of Ren’s medicine expenses.
Ren thought:
For singing.
He hated himself for thinking it.
Then thought it again.
The woman selling mirrors appeared on Fifth Street.
Nobody knew where she came from.
Her mirrors were small.
Hand-sized.
Black glass.
No reflection.
Ren stopped.
“What are these?”
“Doors.”
“To where?”
“Elsewhere.”
“Useful.”
She smiled.
“Sometimes.”
Ren should have walked away.
Instead:
“Can they change a life?”
The woman looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
Ren almost laughed.
“I don’t know.”
“Then come back when you do.”
He did.
Three days later.
“I want another life.”
“Whose?”
Ren immediately thought of Toma.
That frightened him.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They must want yours.”
Ren laughed.
“Nobody wants mine.”
The woman said nothing.
A week later, Ren met Toma in a tavern.
By accident.
Probably.
Ren had begun going to places Toma went.
He told himself he was curious.
Toma was drunk.
Very.
He sat beside Ren.
“You’re the roof man.”
“Former roof man.”
“What happened?”
“Fell.”
Toma nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
Ren expected pity.
There wasn’t any.
Just tiredness.
They drank.
Toma became increasingly strange.
Not loud.
Quiet.
Finally he said:
“Do you ever wish you could disappear?”
Ren laughed.
“Constantly.”
“No.”
Toma looked at him.
“I mean actually stop being you.”
Ren stopped laughing.
Toma hated performing.
Ren could not understand this.
“You’re good.”
“I know.”
“People love you.”
“I know.”
“You make money.”
“I know.”
“Then what is wrong with you?”
Toma smiled.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The question everyone asks.”
Toma’s father had been a musician.
Famous.
Toma had been performing since six.
Lessons.
Competitions.
Tours.
Every adult around him had agreed that his talent was extraordinary.
Nobody had asked whether he wanted it.
“Stop.”
Ren shrugged.
Toma laughed.
“You sound like my mother.”
“You’re thirty.”
“Yes.”
“So stop.”
“My parents depend on me.”
“So does my father.”
“My musicians.”
“Find another singer.”
“My contracts.”
“Break them.”
“My audience.”
Ren stared.
“Your audience?”
Toma looked embarrassed.
“I know.”
Then Toma said:
“I’d rather repair roofs.”
Ren nearly hit him.
“You have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Probably.”
“I can’t work.”
“I know.”
“My father is sick.”
“I know.”
“We count coins before buying food.”
Toma looked at him.
“I know.”
Ren became angry.
“No, you don’t.”
Toma nodded.
“Exactly.”
Ren remembered the mirror.
They visited the woman together.
She listened.
Then placed the black glass between them.
“You exchange completely.”
Toma asked:
“Bodies?”
“Lives.”
“What does that mean?”
“Everything the world recognizes as yours.”
“Memories?”
“No.”
Ren frowned.
“So I’ll remember being me?”
“Yes.”
“But everyone will think I’m him?”
“You will be him.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“It answers exactly enough.”
The woman warned them.
Repeatedly.
Ren thought this was encouraging.
Fraudsters rarely tried this hard to stop customers.
“You will inherit obligations.”
“Fine.”
“Relationships.”
“Fine.”
“Consequences.”
“Fine.”
“Things neither of you knows about the other.”
Toma said:
“Fine.”
The woman sighed.
“People always say that before information becomes specific.”
They traded.
Ren woke in silk sheets.
For approximately thirty seconds, he believed every decision he had ever made was correct.
Then someone knocked.
“Toma?”
Ren looked at his hands.
Toma’s hands.
Long fingers.
No roofing scars.
“Toma, rehearsal.”
Ren smiled.
Rehearsal.
He could handle rehearsal.
He could not.
Toma’s body knew music.
Ren’s mind did not.
His fingers moved almost automatically, but interpretation was wrong.
Timing wrong.
Breathing wrong.
The musicians stared.
“What are you doing?”
“Bad morning.”
“You have the royal performance tonight.”
Ren froze.
“The what?”
Across town, Toma woke beneath a leaking roof.
A bucket filled beside the bed.
Ren’s father called:
“Ren?”
Toma sat up.
His back hurt.
His hands hurt.
Everything hurt.
He smiled.
No rehearsal.
No manager.
No audience.
Freedom.
Then Ren’s father began coughing.
Blood hit the cloth.
Toma stopped smiling.
The first week destroyed both fantasies.
Ren discovered Toma owed money.
A lot.
The house was rented.
The beautiful clothes belonged to sponsors.
The contracts contained penalties.
Toma’s parents did not merely depend on him.
His father had gambling debts.
His mother controlled his finances.
His manager controlled his schedule.
People touched Ren constantly.
Fans.
Stylists.
Musicians.
Strangers.
Everyone wanted something from Toma.
Ren began locking doors.
Toma discovered poverty.
Not conceptually.
Specifically.
Medicine cost twelve silver.
They had eight.
The landlord wanted rent.
Ren’s old employer would offer ground work but not roofing.
The kitchen roof leaked.
Toma tried repairing it.
He smashed his thumb.
Ren’s father laughed until he coughed.
“You’re terrible at this today.”
Toma laughed too.
Then cried in the privy where the old man couldn’t see.
Months passed.
Something unexpected happened.
They adapted.
Ren learned music.
Not like Toma.
Differently.
Audiences noticed.
Some hated it.
Others preferred it.
Ren renegotiated contracts.
Fired the manager.
His new life became less unbearable.
Toma found warehouse work.
Then carpentry.
He repaired the kitchen roof badly.
Then correctly.
Ren’s father became fond of this changed version of his son.
That hurt Toma.
Because the affection belonged partly to someone else.
They met after six months.
Ren stared at his old face.
Toma stared at his.
“This is disturbing.”
“Yes.”
They sat.
Neither immediately asked to trade back.
That surprised both.
“How’s my father?”
Toma answered carefully.
“Sicker.”
Ren’s stomach dropped.
“You’re taking care of him?”
“Yes.”
“Properly?”
Toma became angry.
“Yes.”
“I’m asking.”
“I sold your tools for medicine.”
Ren stood.
“You what?”
“We needed money.”
“Those were my father’s tools.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Toma stood too.
“And you canceled my eastern tour.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“That tour supported three musicians.”
“They found other work.”
“One didn’t.”
Ren stopped.
There it was.
Obligations.
Consequences.
Lives extending outward.
“Trade back,” Ren said.
Toma looked at him.
“Do you want to?”
Ren opened his mouth.
Stopped.
Toma laughed bitterly.
“Exactly.”
Neither wanted their old life back.
Not completely.
That was the ugliest part.
Ren missed his father.
His hands.
His history.
But he did not miss poverty.
He did not miss the ladder.
Toma missed music sometimes.
His mother.
Certain friends.
But he slept better.
Nobody applauded him.
He loved that.
Then Ren’s father died.
Toma was beside him.
Ren was performing two hundred miles away.
The message arrived after the concert.
Ren collapsed backstage.
He traveled home.
Too late.
At the funeral, people embraced Toma.
Called him Ren.
Said:
“You were a good son.”
Toma looked sick every time.
Ren stood ten feet away in Toma’s beautiful body.
Nobody knew why he was crying.
Afterward, Ren struck Toma.
Hard.
Toma did not resist.
“You took it.”
Ren shouted.
“You took the last six months.”
Toma wiped blood from his mouth.
“You gave them to me.”
Ren hit him again.
Then stopped.
Because that was true.
And because it wasn’t enough.
They found the mirror woman.
“Reverse it.”
She looked at them.
“Both?”
“Yes.”
Toma nodded.
“Yes.”
The woman retrieved the glass.
Then asked:
“Why?”
Ren said:
“Because it was mine.”
Toma said:
“Because it wasn’t.”
The woman nodded.
“Better answers.”
They returned.
Not to the moment they left.
To the lives as they existed now.
Ren returned to his body.
His father remained dead.
The tools remained sold.
Toma returned to his.
Contracts remained broken.
His career had changed.
Nothing reset.
They had not escaped consequences by returning to ownership.
Ren grieved.
Properly.
Or as properly as anyone does.
Toma visited.
Sometimes they sat without speaking.
They were not exactly friends.
There was too much between them for such a simple word.
Years later, Ren became a carpenter.
Mostly ground work.
Occasionally he climbed.
Never high.
He stopped treating fear as a moral failure.
Toma continued music.
Less touring.
Smaller rooms.
He earned less.
He liked the songs more.
Once, over dinner, Toma asked:
“Would you do it again?”
Ren thought.
“No.”
“Because my life was worse than it looked?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Ren looked at his hands.
His own hands.
Scarred.
Older.
Familiar.
“Because I thought I was choosing between two lives.”
Toma waited.
“I wasn’t.”
“What were you choosing?”
“Whether to abandon mine.”
Toma nodded.
After a while he said:
“I still think about the warehouse.”
Ren laughed.
“You’re insane.”
“I liked it.”
“You carried boxes for ten hours.”
“Nobody asked me to sing.”
“Fair.”
They finished dinner.
Outside, rain began.
Ren looked automatically toward the roof.
No leak.
He had repaired it himself.
Toma noticed.
“Good roof.”
“Yes.”
“Think it will hold?”
Ren listened to the rain.
“Probably.”
Toma smiled.
“Good enough?”
Ren smiled back.
“Tonight it is.”