Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

  There’s a half foot of fresh powder on the streets, and the snowplows are out.

  Stepping down onto the sidewalk, I take a moment to absorb my surroundings.

  Several customers from the bar are staggering away, but I see no one else out on the streets.

  I don’t know where to go.

  I have nowhere to go.

  Two valid hotel keycards in my pocket, but it wouldn’t be safe to use either of them. Other Jasons could have easily obtained copies. They could be inside my room at this moment, waiting for me to return.

  It dawns on me—my last ampoule is back at that second hotel.

  Gone now.

  I start walking down the sidewalk.

  It’s two in the morning, and I’m running on fumes.

  How many other Jasons are wandering these streets at this very moment, facing the same fears, the same questions?

  How many have been killed?

  How many are out hunting?

  I can’t escape the feeling that I’m not safe in Logan Square, even in the middle of the night. Every alley I pass, every shadowy doorway, I’m looking for movement, for someone coming after me.

  A half mile brings me to Humboldt Park.

  I track through the snow.

  Out into a silent field.

  I’m beyond tired.

  My legs aching.

  My stomach rumbling with hunger.

  I can’t keep going.

  A large evergreen towers in the distance, its branches sagging with snow.

  The lowest limbs are four feet off the ground, but they offer some semblance of shelter from the storm.

  Close to the trunk, there’s only a dusting of snow, and I brush it away and sit in the dirt against the tree on the leeward side.

  It’s so quiet.

  I can hear the distant mumble of snowplows moving through the city.

  The sky is neon pink from all the lights reflecting off the low clouds.

  I draw my coat in close and ball my hands into fists to preserve some core heat.

  From where I sit, my view is of an open field, interspersed with trees.

  The snow falls through the streetlamps along a distant walking path, making coronas of brilliant flakes near the light.

  Nothing moves out there.

  It’s cold, but not as bad as it might be if the skies were calm and clear.

  I don’t think I’m going to freeze to death.

  But I don’t think I’m going to sleep either.

  As I shut my eyes, an idea strikes me.

  Randomness.

  How do you beat an opponent who is inherently wired to predict any and all moves you might make?

  You do something completely random.

  Unplanned.

  You make a move you haven’t considered, to which you’ve given little or no prior thought.

  Maybe it’s a bad move that blows up in your face and costs you the game.

  But perhaps it’s a play the other you never saw coming, which gives you an unanticipated strategic advantage.

  So how do I apply that line of thinking to my situation?

  How do I do something utterly random that defies anticipation?

  —

  Somehow I sleep.

  Wake up shivering to a world of gray and white.

  The snow and the wind have stopped, and through the leafless trees I can see pieces of the skyline in the distance, the highest buildings just touching the cloud deck that overhangs the city.

  The open field is white and still.

  It’s dawn.

  The streetlamps wink out.

  I sit up, unbelievably stiff.

  There’s the faintest dusting of snow on my coat.

  My breath plumes in the cold.

  Of all the versions of Chicago I’ve seen, none can touch the serenity of this morning.

  Where the empty streets keep everything hushed.

  Where the sky is white and the ground is white and the buildings and the trees stand starkly against it all.

  I think of the seven million people still in bed under the covers or standing at their windows, looking out between the curtains at what the storm left behind.

  Something so safe and comforting in the imagining of it.

  I struggle onto my feet.

  I woke up with a crazy idea.

  Something that happened in the bar last night, right before the other Jason showed up, inspired it. It’s nothing I would have ever thought of on my own, which makes me almost trust it.

  Heading back across the park, I walk north toward Logan Square.

  Toward home.

  —

  At the first convenience store I come to, I go inside and buy a single Swisher Sweets cigar and a mini BIC lighter.

  $8.21 remaining.

  —

  My coat is damp from the snow.

  I hang it at the rack by the entrance and make my way down the counter.

  This place feels gloriously authentic, as if it’s always been here. The 1950s-era vibe isn’t from the red-vinyl upholstering on the booths and stools or the framed photographs of regulars on the walls down through the decades. It comes, I think, from never changing. The smell of the place is all bacon grease and brewing coffee and the indelible remnants of a time when I would’ve been moving through clouds of cigarette smoke en route to a table.

  Aside from a few customers at the counter, I spot two cops in one booth, three nurses just off-shift in another, and an old man in a black suit staring with a kind of bored intensity into his cup of coffee.

  I sit at the counter just to be near the heat radiating off the open grill.

  An ancient waitress comes over.

  I know I must look homeless and strung-out, but she doesn’t let on, doesn’t judge, just takes my order with a worn-out midwestern courtesy.

  It feels good to be indoors.

  The windows are fogging up.

  The cold is leaving my bones.

  This all-night diner is only eight blocks from my house, but I’ve never eaten here.

  When the coffee arrives, I wrap my dirty fingers around the ceramic mug and soak in the warmth.

  I had to do the math in advance.

  All I can afford is this cup of coffee, two eggs, and some toast.

  I try to eat slowly, to make it last, but I’m famished.

  The waitress takes pity on me and brings more toast at no extra charge.

  She’s kind.

  It makes me feel even lousier about what’s going to happen.

  I check the time on my drug-dealer flip phone, the one I bought to call Daniela in another Chicago. It won’t make calls in this world—I guess minutes aren’t transferable across the multiverse.

  8:15 a.m.

  Jason2 probably left for work twenty minutes ago in order to catch the train to his 9:30 lecture.

  Or maybe he hasn’t left at all. Maybe he’s sick, or staying home today for some reason I’ve not anticipated. That would be a disaster, but it’s too risky for me to go anywhere near my house to confirm that he’s not there.

  I pull the $8.21 out of my pocket and set it on the counter.

  It just barely covers my breakfast plus a cheap-ass tip.

  I take one last sip of coffee.

  Then I reach into the patch pocket of my flannel button-down and pull out the cigar and the lighter.

  I glance around.

  The diner is now packed.

  The two cops who were here when I first arrived are gone, but there’s another one sitting in the corner booth at the far end.

  My hands shake imperceptibly as I tear open the packaging.

  True to its name, the end of the cigar tastes faintly sweet.

  It takes me three tries to strike a flame.

  I fire the tobacco at the end of the cigar, draw in a mouthful of smoke, and blow a stream toward the back of the short-order cook who’s flipping hotcakes on the griddle.

  For ten seconds, no one notices.

  T
hen the older woman sitting next to me in a cat-hair-covered jacket turns and says, “You can’t do that in here.”

  And I respond with something I would never in a million years even dream of saying: “But there’s nothing like a cigar after a meal.”

  She looks at me through her plate-glass lenses like I’ve lost my mind.

  The waitress walks over holding a carafe of steaming coffee and looking massively disappointed.

  Shaking her head, she says with the voice of a scolding mother, “You know you can’t smoke that in here.”

  “But it’s delicious.”

  “Do I need to call the manager over?”

  I take another puff.

  Exhale.

  The short-order cook—a wide, muscled guy with ink-covered arms—turns around and glares at me.

  I say to the waitress, “That’s a great idea. You should go get the manager right now, because I am not putting this out.”

  As the waitress leaves, the old woman sitting beside me, whose meal I’ve ruined, mutters, “What a rude young man.”

  And she throws down her fork, climbs off the stool, and heads for the door.

  Some of the other customers in my vicinity have begun to take notice.

  But I keep smoking, until a rail of a man emerges from the back of the restaurant with the waitress in tow. He wears black jeans and a white oxford with sweat stains down the sides and a solid-color tie whose knot is unraveling.

  By the general dishevelment of his appearance, I’m guessing he’s worked all night.

  Stopping behind me, he says, “I’m Nick, the manager on duty. You can’t smoke that inside. You’re disturbing the customers.”

  I turn slightly in my stool and meet his eyes. He looks tired and annoyed, and I feel like such a jerk putting him through this, but I can’t stop now.

  I glance around, all eyes on me now, a hotcake burning on the griddle.

  I ask, “Are you all disturbed by my fine cigar?”

  Yesses abound.

  Someone calls me an asshole.

  Movement at the far end of the diner catches my eye.

  Finally.

  The police officer slides out of the corner booth, and as he heads my way down the length of the aisle, I hear his radio crackle.

  He’s young.

  Late twenties if I had to guess.

  Short and stocky.

  A Marine-like hardness in his eyes and an intelligence too.

  The manager takes a step back, relieved.

  Now the officer stands beside me, says, “We have a clean indoor air ordinance in the city, which you’re violating right now.”

  I take another puff from the cigar.

  The cop says, “Look, I’ve been up most of the night. A lot of these other customers have as well. Why do you want to ruin everyone’s breakfast?”

  “Why do you want to ruin my cigar?”

  A flicker of anger passes over the cop’s face.

  His pupils dilate.

  “Put that cigar out right now. Last warning.”

  “Or what?”

  He sighs.

  “That was not the response I was hoping for. Get up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to jail. If that cigar isn’t out in five seconds, I’m going to assume you’re resisting arrest, which means I get to be a lot less gentle.”

  I drop my cigar in my coffee cup, and as I step down off the stool, the officer deftly whips the handcuffs off his belt and locks the bracelets around my wrists.

  “Carrying any weapons or needles? Anything that could hurt me or that I should know about?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you on any drugs or medication right now?”

  “No, sir.”

  He pats me down, then takes me by the arm.

  As we walk toward the entrance, the other customers applaud.

  His cruiser is parked right out front.

  He opens the rear door and tells me to watch my head.

  It’s almost impossible to gracefully duck into the back of a police car with your hands cuffed behind you. The officer climbs in behind the wheel.

  Buckling his seat belt, he cranks the engine and pulls out into the snowy street.

  The backseat seems to have been constructed especially for discomfort. There’s no legroom whatsoever, my knees are crushed into the cage, and the seats themselves are made of a hard plastic composite that feels like I’m sitting on concrete.

  As I stare through the bars that protect the window, I watch the familiar buildings of my neighborhood scroll past, wondering if this has any hope in hell of working.

  —

  We pull into the parking garage of the 14th District Police Station.

  Officer Hammond hauls me out of the backseat and escorts me through a pair of steel doors into a booking room.

  There’s a row of desks, with chairs for prisoners on one side and a Plexiglas partition that separates them from a workstation on the other.

  The room smells like vomit and desperation badly covered over with Lysol.

  At this hour of the morning, there’s only one other prisoner aside from me—a woman at the far end of the room, chained to a desk. She’s rocking manically back and forth, scratching herself, tweaking.

  Hammond searches me again, and then tells me to have a seat.

  He unlocks the bracelet on my left wrist, cuffs it to an eyebolt in the desk, and says, “I need to see your driver’s license.”

  “I lost it.”

  He makes a note of this on his paperwork and then goes around to the other side of the desk and logs in to the computer.

  He takes my name.

  Social Security number.

  Address.

  Employer.

  I ask, “What exactly am I being charged with?”

  “Disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.”

  Hammond begins to fill out the arrest report.

  After a few minutes, he stops typing and looks at me through the scratched-up Plexi. “You don’t strike me as a crazy person or an asshole. You don’t have a sheet. You’ve never been in trouble before. So what happened back there? It’s almost like…you were trying to get arrested. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “No. I am sorry I messed up your breakfast.”

  He shrugs. “There’ll be others.”

  I’m fingerprinted.

  Photographed.

  They take my shoes and give me a pair of slippers and a blanket.

  When he’s finished booking me into the system, I ask, “When do I get my phone call?”

  “You can have it right now.” He lifts the receiver from a landline. “Who would you like to call?”

  “My wife.”

  I give him the number and watch him dial.

  When it starts to ring, he hands me the receiver across the partition.

  My heart is pounding.

  Pick up, honey. Come on.

  Voicemail.

  I hear my voice, but it’s not my message. Did Jason2 rerecord it as a subtle marking of his territory?

  I say to Officer Hammond, “She’s not answering. Would you hang up, please?”

  He kills the call a second before the beep.

  “Daniela probably didn’t recognize the number. Would you mind trying one more time?”

  He dials again.

  It rings again.

  I’m wondering—if she doesn’t answer, should I risk just leaving a message?

  No.

  What if Jason2 heard it? If she doesn’t answer this time, I’ll have to figure out some other way to—

  “Hello?”

  “Daniela.”

  “Jason?”

  Tears sting my eyes at the sound of her voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Where are you calling from? It says Chicago Police on the caller ID. I thought it was one of those fraternal order charity things, so I didn’t—”

  “I just need you to listen for a minute.”

&nb
sp; “Is everything okay?”

  “Something happened on my way to work. I’ll explain everything when—”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but I’m in jail.”

  For a moment, it gets so quiet on the other end of the line that I can hear the NPR show she’s listening to in the background.

  She says finally, “You got arrested?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For what?”

  “I need you to come bail me out.”

  “Jesus. What did you do?”

  “Look, I don’t have all the time in the world right now to explain. This is kind of like my one phone call.”

  “Should I call a lawyer?”

  “No, just get down here as soon as you can. I’m at the Fourteenth District Precinct on…” I look to Hammond for the street address.

  “North California Avenue.”

  “North California. And bring your checkbook. Has Charlie already left for school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to pick him up and bring him with you when you come to get me. This is very—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Daniela—”

  “I am not bringing my son to get his father out of jail. What the hell happened, Jason?”

  Officer Hammond raps his knuckles on the Plexiglas and moves a finger across his throat.

  I say, “My time’s up. Please get here as soon as you can.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey.”

  “What?”

  “I love you so much.”

  She hangs up.

  —

  My lonely holding cell consists of a paper-thin mattress on a concrete base.

  Toilet.

  Sink.

  Camera over the door, watching me.

  I lie in bed with the jail-issue blanket draped over me and stare at a patch of ceiling that I’m guessing has been studied by all manner of people in the throes of despair and hopelessness and poor decision-making.

  What runs through my mind are the innumerable things that might go wrong, that could so easily stop Daniela from coming to me.

  She could call Jason2 on his cell phone.

  He could call her between classes just to say hi.

  One of the other Jasons could decide to make his move.

  If any one of those things happens, this entire plan will blow up spectacularly in my face.

  My stomach hurts.

  My heart is racing.

  I try to calm myself down, but there’s no stopping the fear.

  I wonder if any of my doppelgängers have anticipated this move. I try to take comfort in the idea that they couldn’t have. If I hadn’t seen that belligerent drunk at the bar last night, obnoxiously hitting on those women and getting thrown out by the bouncer, it would never have occurred to me to get myself arrested as a ploy to make Daniela and Charlie come to me in a safe environment.