When You and I Collide

by Kate Norris

  Father had made her play this game before, but without such grim stakes. He flipped a coin, then checked the results without letting her see. After years of training her focus, Winnie could usually force herself to see the splinter of the toss, and then she would know that if it was tails in that other world, it was heads in her own, or vice versa. The next step—the one she’d never succeeded at—was changing the results of the coin toss that had already happened. After she tried to will it different, Father would look again, hoping to see a new result, and be disappointed.

  Winnie didn’t really think she could affect the outcome of something that had already happened like that. Then again, Father always told her that she was small-minded to cling to a linear idea of time. Space and time were a continuum, and relative to the observer. She was a different sort of observer, wasn’t she? So, Father said, why wouldn’t she be able to use her observations to influence time as well as matter?

  Winnie glanced at the kitten, looking so forlorn sitting there on the workbench. It didn’t know it should run away. It was such a baby, she didn’t even think it would be able to.

  Would Father really kill it if Winnie failed to change the results of the coin toss? She looked at him—the wildness in his eyes.

  Yes.

  He would.

  Winnie would try her hardest. That was the most she could do.

  “All right,” Father said. “Put your hands on the receivers.” Winnie took hold of the metal rods that measured the electrical activity in her own body. “Scott, the circuit, please.”

  Scott stood there a moment, looking at her, his expression one of confusion and pity—exactly what she’d wanted to avoid. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

  Then he flipped the circuit, flooding the Faraday cage with current. Electricity would saturate the metal mesh surface, then harmlessly bleed back into the earth below through the grounding wire.

  Father tossed the coin in the air, caught it, and placed it, covered, on the back of his hand. He glanced at the face of the coin himself without letting Scott or Winnie see, but Winnie didn’t need to look to know. She’d caught the splinter as soon as the coin was tossed—it was heads there. So, tails in her own world.

  “All right, Winifred. I want you to change the result. Now concentrate, and tell me when you’re ready.”

  Even though Winnie thought she had no control over the coin, she still had to try. She closed her eyes so tight they hurt and focused as hard as she could. She could hear the kitten meowing on the bench a few feet away. Why did Father do these things?

  But she knew. She knew.

  Winnie squeezed the receivers in her hands and wished for a different outcome. Heads, heads, heads, she repeated fervently in her mind.

  “Enough—five seconds and I’m looking, whether you’re ready or not.”

  One of the machines began to whine, but she pushed the noise aside. Do it, she told herself fiercely. Just force it to happen.

  Winnie could hear the cage humming. She felt a sort of pop below her breastbone. Her eyes flew open. Something was wrong. If something was wrong with the cage, all that current could touch her, stick out a forked tongue and take a taste . . .

  “Scott?” Winnie cried shrilly, her head full of images of being electrocuted, burnt to a crisp. “Scott! I think something’s wrong!”

  Scott hurried close. “It’s buzzing.” He bent over to take a closer look at something, then immediately jumped up. “The grounding wire—it’s frayed! Professor Schulde, cut the power!”

  But it was too late. There was too much current to be contained, and with the grounding compromised, nowhere for all that energy to go. Electricity jumped off the Faraday cage in a blinding arc—how could something so dangerous be so pretty?—and Scott was right there, the quickest path to the ground.

  Winnie saw Scott seize as electricity surged through his body. Then he crumpled.

  Winnie’s legs gave out beneath her almost in tandem with Scott’s, and she collapsed onto the floor of the cage. Its surface was still buzzing with charge, but she was safe inside. If the wire mesh had been damaged, she would have been at risk, but she should have realized immediately that wasn’t the case. She’d been worried for herself, when she had been the only one who was safe.

  Her nose was thick with the acrid smell of singed hair. Scott’s hair. She shook her head ferociously, as if she could undo what she’d done through the sheer vehemence of her denial.

  First Mama, then Scott. Was anyone who got too close to Father doomed, or was it just anyone she loved? Or was it the two of them, together, who destroyed all pure, good things they touched? She couldn’t bear it. Everything was too awful. She couldn’t bear it.

  Father shut off the generator and stumbled over, looking like a ghost of himself. Pale, edges blurred—that was the smoke. “Are you all right?” he asked her, voice trembling.

  Winnie didn’t bother to answer. “Scott? Scott, can you hear me?” She pushed the door of the Faraday cage open and tried to run to him, but Father blocked her way.

  “Stay here. I’ll check on him.”

  Scott was crumpled on the floor like a discarded rag doll. She could see the scorched hole on the arm of his lab coat from where the electricity had struck. He was so still.

  Father knelt by his side and shook him, shouting Scott’s name right in his face.

  But he didn’t move.

  Father looked back at her. He looked shell-shocked, and suddenly sober.

  She hated him. She hated him like she had never hated anything.

  Scott couldn’t be dead. Her mind skipped away from the thought. She refused to live in a world without him in it.

  Winnie’s head buzzed.

  Her vision tunneled, then went dark.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Winnie came to, she pulled herself back up onto trembling legs, angry with herself for having fainted. The laboratory was full of smoke. Something must have caught fire. Her eyes searched the floor frantically. Where was Scott? Had Father even called for a doctor yet?

  Winnie stumbled forward, waving smoke away from her eyes. “Father?” she called out. She couldn’t see him for all the smoke.

  A high-pitched whine—Father must have switched on the exhaust hood—and the smoke began to clear.

  “Winnie, what on earth are you doing? Did you hear the explosion? I think it was just a circuit breaker, thank god,” Father said. “Don’t you know when you hear something like that, you’re supposed to run away from the sound, not toward it?”

  Winnie hardly registered what he said. She was looking past him, at Scott, who was throwing extinguishing chemicals on the small fire that flickered around the circuit box.

  “Scott? What’s going on? You’re all right?”

  He grinned at her and gave a small wave before returning to the task at hand.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Father said. “You weren’t worried about me. You just wanted to check on your darling.”

  Winnie felt herself blush, even though embarrassment was low on her list of concerns at the moment.

  “No, I just . . .” Winnie trailed off.

  What was going on? Had she imagined the whole thing? Had what she’d experienced been a powerful splinter that she’d somehow confused with her own reality?

  “Everything is fine, so run back upstairs—and I’ll forget you came down here if you forget I ever left the door unlocked.”

  Unlocked? The basement door didn’t have a lock. It was the smoke, and the chemicals—it had to be. She was confused, or Father was, or they both were. She turned around, moving as if she were underwater, and climbed back up the stairs.

  When she reached the top, she saw that the basement door did have a lock, and it had been bolted from the inside. Winnie was even more confused. Had she locked the door behind her and fo
rgotten? And when had Father put a lock in, anyway?

  She opened the door and fled into the bright light and fresh air of the kitchen. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Her head hurt from the smoke—or had she hit it when she fainted? What was going on?

  She heard footsteps on the basement stairs, either Father or Scott. She opened her eyes. Scott approached her, his face a mask of concern.

  “Winnie, what’s wrong? You seem, I don’t know—confused.”

  Winnie didn’t even try to stanch her tears. “Oh Scott, I thought you were dead.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. She pressed her face to his chest and let the thirsty cotton of his pristine lab coat absorb her tears.

  “Shh,” he soothed. “Here, let me look at you.”

  Winnie pulled back a little and tilted her face up toward his.

  “I’m fine,” Scott said. “It was just a little accident.”

  He leaned down and gently pressed his lips to hers. She was surprised by how soft they were.

  How many times had she thought about exactly this moment, under the covers at night—her favorite bedtime story—or in a sudden unwelcome flash when he glanced over at her in the lab? It was her first kiss. It had happened a thousand times before, but finally—finally—it was happening for real.

  In the movies, women kicked up a leg when they were kissed, or swooned, melting into their beloved’s arms. Winnie stayed very still. The moment felt so perfect she feared that if she so much as twitched, it would burst like a soap bubble.

  Still, the kiss was over too soon.

  Scott pulled back, and adjusted his glasses, which had gone slightly askew. Winnie was electric with fondness for him—fully charged and dying to spark. She already wanted to kiss him again, and felt almost bold enough to do it.

  But the expression on Scott’s face wasn’t fond. He looked deeply concerned—frightened, even. His eyes scanned her hair, her clothes, her lips. He backed away from her.

  No! It hadn’t been a mistake. Scott couldn’t think it was a mistake!

  Hadn’t he felt what she felt?

  He frowned, and Winnie braced herself for some argument—some excuse—for why he didn’t want her after all. Her father. Her age.

  But Scott said none of that. And still, his words knocked her flat.

  “You’re not Winnie,” he said shakily. “Who the hell are you?”

  PART TWO

  Sorrow is concealed in gilded palaces, and there’s no escaping it.

  —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Scott took another step back from her, looking stuck somewhere between horrified and awestruck.

  Winnie was confused—but also oddly relieved. This was bizarre. Bizarre, she could handle. She could handle anything, so long as it wasn’t Scott saying something like Oh, we can’t do this—your father as code for I don’t want you after all.

  “I—of course I’m me,” Winnie said. Who else could she be? She looked down at her hands, turning them back and forth like a magician—see, no tricks here.

  She took a step toward Scott. He backed up until he was pressed against the kitchen wall. His brows tightened in a quick flinch of fear before he could compose his face.

  “The smoke—I think you’re confused,” Winnie said gently, in a tone she recognized as one learned from her mother. It was the voice Mama had used to soothe one of their injured hens—or one on the chopping block.

  “I’m not,” Scott said firmly. His gaze traveled up and down over her face like he was trying to analyze every detail. “It’s uncanny!” he whispered.

  “What’s uncanny?” she whispered back. Was this just a terrible dream? Maybe it had all just been a nightmare—Father’s anger, Scott’s accident—and she was still asleep.

  Then she realized. Why hadn’t she understood sooner? The locked door. Father’s smile. The shock, the smoke—it had made her stupid.

  This wasn’t her house.

  That wasn’t her Father.

  This was a different reality.

  And Winnie had no idea how she’d gotten here.

  * * *

  • • •

  Winnie looked around wildly. There was no shocking difference between this world and her own—not in the kitchen, at least. But as she looked around, she noticed a few small things. Cheerful yellow gingham curtained the windows, not just plain white blinds like at home. There was a little tray housing a napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table, while her own table was always cleared between meals. Dishes were left drying in the rack, not immediately dried and put away. It was all nice enough, and overall, pleasantly familiar.

  But this wasn’t her home. Was she safe here?

  Not that her own home had been safe.

  Scott—oh, Scott—if the accident had been real—

  Winnie shut that door inside herself so sharply she could almost hear the slam. If she thought about that now—

  No. She could not think about that now.

  Scott’s double stood in front of her, examining Winnie quizzically.

  “You see it now?” he asked.

  Winnie nodded. She saw.

  Winnie closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath.

  She needed to examine this new environment analytically, like a scientist would, to discover and avoid any potential dangers.

  The first step of the scientific method was simple: ask a question.

  Where the hell am I?

  Winnie tried to work backward in her head. Although Father recognized her, he said she shouldn’t be in the laboratory, and the door to the lab had a lock here. She existed in this reality, but she must not work with Father and Scott. What else was different here?

  For one thing, this Scott was an unknown variable. Potentially dangerous, like all unknowns. Winnie looked at him, and she tried to believe this.

  But she couldn’t. Not now that all the fear had fallen from Scott’s face as the shock wore off. He looked at her with the open wonder of a little boy.

  She looked at him, and she saw Scott.

  “I can see those wheels turning,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

  Even though Winnie knew she should be extremely careful until she got her bearings, she couldn’t make herself distrust him. So she would gather as much information as she could and give as little in return as possible.

  “I—I don’t know. What are you thinking?”

  Scott smiled and gave a little shrug. “Just the obvious. Project Nightingale must have had one hell of a breakthrough.” He frowned. “Although they couldn’t have intended to send you?”

  Nightingale? Why would Scott’s mind jump to Hawthorn’s work? In her world, they’d only just learned of it—and it certainly wasn’t something Scott had any excitement about.

  “Nightingale has nothing to do with this,” Winnie said sharply.

  And she would have nothing to do with them.

  Winnie didn’t know where, exactly, she was, or how she’d gotten there, so it felt good to feel certain about something. To hell with Hawthorn. To hell with Father. To hell with any scientist whose work put other people’s lives at risk.

  Winnie had endured a lifetime of Father’s poking and prodding. If she’d stood up for herself and put an end to the experiments earlier, Scott wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

  She would never let herself be experimented on again. Not by Father, and certainly not by Hawthorn.

  From here on out, she would be designing the experiments herself.

  “If not Nightingale, who?” he asked. “And what are you doing here?”

  Winnie frowned. How had she gotten there?

  “It was just—I don’t know, exactly. An accident.”

  The color began to drain
from his face.

  “What is it?” Winnie asked.

  “If it wasn’t planned—how can I explain it?” Scott said the last part to himself, then bit his lip and sighed, eyes searching the space above her head as if there might be some answer printed there on the wall. “You see, matter can’t just poof! into existence. That’s been one of the challenges for us—trying to figure out how to balance the ‘scales.’ If we’re going to transport matter, we need to absorb energy in return. There has to be exchange, not just transmission. It goes back to the first law of thermodynamics . . .” He trailed off, and gave Winnie an uncertain look, as if he was worried this was all over her head. “I’m sorry, is this making sense?”

  “Scott, I know what the first law of thermodynamics is! ‘Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.’” It was unsettling to have him talking to her like this, as if she were a silly schoolgirl instead of a peer. “You and Father—I take it you work for Hawthorn here? With Project Nightingale?” She was . . . not thrilled by this development. “Well, in my world, we don’t. But I do work with you, and with my father. You can talk to me normally!”

  “I’m sorry! But none of this is normal,” he said, then shook his head. “Anyway, the first law of thermodynamics applies to matter too, of course. The amount of ‘stuff’—of any kind—in our universe always remains constant. So, if you want to transport something to another reality—into another closed system—you have to receive something back too, or else . . . well, or else we have no idea what could happen.”

  He paused, and Winnie felt the full weight of his words. She understood his panic now. Her being there—it upset the order of things. The cosmos would strive to regain equilibrium. But how? And what would it do to their world?