Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

  “Which is a large version of that thing you were working on when we first met—the cube?”

  “Exactly. And somewhere along the way, he realized everything he’d given up by letting his work be the thing that defined him. He looked back at the choice he made fifteen years ago with regret. But the box can’t take you back or forward in time. It only connects all possible worlds at the same moment, in the present. So he searched until he found my world. And he traded my life for his.”

  The look on Daniela’s face is pure shock and disgust.

  She rises from the bench and runs toward the restrooms.

  Charlie starts after her, but I put my hand on his shoulder and say, “Just give her a minute.”

  “I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You—well, not you, him—he had this different, like, energy about him. We talked more, especially at dinner. He was just, I don’t know…”

  “What?”

  “Different.”

  There are things I want to ask my son, questions blazing through my mind.

  Was he more fun?

  A better father?

  A better husband?

  Was life more exciting with the imposter?

  But I’m afraid the answers to those questions might shatter me.

  Daniela returns.

  So pale.

  As she sits back down, I ask, “You all right?”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “What?”

  “This morning, when you got yourself arrested—was that to get me to come to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why not just come to the house after…Jesus, I don’t even know what to call him.”

  “Jason2.”

  “After Jason2 left?”

  I say, “Here’s where things get really crazy.”

  Charlie asks, “Things aren’t already crazy?”

  “I wasn’t the only…” It sounds insane to even be saying the words.

  But I have to tell them.

  “What?” Daniela asks.

  “I wasn’t the only version of me to make it back into this world.”

  “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “Other Jasons made it back as well.”

  “What other Jasons?”

  “Versions of me who escaped into the box in that lab, but took different paths through the multiverse.”

  “How many?” Charlie asks.

  “I don’t know. A lot, maybe.”

  I explain what happened at the sporting-goods store and in the chat room. I tell them about the Jason who tracked me to my room and the one who attacked me with a knife.

  My family’s confusion takes a turn toward outright fear.

  I say, “This is why I got myself arrested. For all I know, many Jasons have been watching you, following you, tracking your every move as they try to figure out what to do. I needed you to come to me in a safe place. That’s why I had you call the car service. I know at least one version of me followed you to the police station. I saw him as we drove past your Honda. This is why I wanted you to bring Charlie with you. But it doesn’t matter. We’re here together, and safe, and now you both know the truth.”

  It takes Daniela a moment to find her voice.

  She says softly, “These other…Jasons…what are they like?”

  “What are you asking?”

  “Do they all share your history? Are they basically you?”

  “Yes. Up until the moment I stepped into the multiverse. Then we all took different paths, had different experiences.”

  “But some are just like you? Versions of my husband who have fought like hell to get back to this world. Who want nothing more than to be with me again. With Charlie.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her eyes narrow.

  What must this be like for her?

  I can see her trying to wrap her mind around the impossibility of it all.

  “Dani, look at me.”

  I stare into her shimmering eyes.

  I say, “I love you.”

  “I love you too. But so do the others, right? Just as much as you do.”

  It rips my guts out to hear those words.

  I have no response to them.

  I look up at the people in our immediate vicinity, wondering if we’re being watched.

  The mezzanine level has become more crowded since we sat.

  I see a woman pushing a stroller.

  Young lovers meandering slowly through the mall, holding hands and ice-cream cones, lost in their bliss.

  An old man shuffling along behind his wife, with a look on his face that says, Take me home, please.

  We’re not safe here.

  We’re not safe anywhere in this city.

  I ask, “Are you with me?”

  She hesitates, looks at Charlie.

  Then back at me.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I’m with you.”

  “Good.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  We leave with nothing but the clothes on our backs and a bank envelope filled with cash from our emptied checking and savings accounts. Daniela puts the rental car on our credit card, but every transaction going forward will be cash-only to make us harder to track.

  By midafternoon, we’re cruising through Wisconsin.

  Rolling pasture

  Minor hills.

  Red barns.

  Silos form a rustic skyline.

  Smoke trickles out of farmhouse chimneys.

  Everything sparkling under a fresh blanket of snow and the sky a brilliant winter blue.

  It’s slow-going, but I keep off the highways.

  Stick to the country roads.

  Take random, unplanned turns with no destination in mind.

  When we stop for gas, Daniela shows me her phone. There’s a stream of missed calls and new texts, all from 773, 847, and 312 Chicago-area phone numbers.

  I open the messaging app.

  Dani—It’s Jason, pls call me back at this number immediately.

  Daniela, this is Jason. First of all, I love you. There’s so much I have to tell you. Pls call me as soon as you get this.

  Daniela, you’re going to be hearing from a bunch of other Jasons if you haven’t already. Your head must be spinning. I am yours. You are mine. I love you forever. Call me the moment you get this.

  Daniela the Jason you’re with is an imposter. Call me.

  Daniela you and Charlie are not safe. The Jason you’re with isn’t who you think he is. Call me right away.

  None of them love you like I do. Call me, Daniela. Pls. Begging you. Love you.

  I will kill them all for you and fix this. Say the word. I will do anything for you.

  I stop reading, put a block on each number, and delete the messages.

  But one text in particular calls out to me.

  It’s not from an unknown number.

  It’s from Jason.

  My cell number. He’s had my phone all this time. Since the night he grabbed me off the street.

  You’re not home, not answering your cell. You must know. All I can say is that I love you. That’s why. My time with you has been the best of my life. Pls call me. Hear me out.

  I power off her phone and tell Charlie to turn his off as well. “We have to leave them off,” I say. “From here on out. Any one of them could track us if they’re transmitting.”

  As the afternoon turns toward evening and the sun begins to slip, we drive into the vast Northwoods.

  The road is empty.

  Ours alone.

  We’ve taken numerous summer vacations to Wisconsin but never ventured this far north. And never in winter. We go miles without seeing any signs of civilization, and each town we pass through seems smaller than the one before—crossroads in the middle of nowhere.

  A hard silence has taken hold inside the Jeep Cherokee, and I’m not sure how to break it.

  Or rather, that I have the
courage to.

  All your life you’re told you’re unique. An individual. That no one on the planet is just like you.

  It’s humanity’s anthem.

  But that isn’t true for me anymore.

  How can Daniela love me more than the other Jasons?

  I look at her in the front passenger seat, wondering what she thinks of me now, what she feels toward me.

  Hell, what I think of me is up for debate.

  She sits quietly beside me, just watching the forest rushing by outside the window.

  I reach across the console and hold her hand.

  She looks over at me, and then back out the window.

  —

  At dusk, I drive into a town called Ice River, which feels appropriately remote.

  We grab some fast food and then stop at a grocery store to stock up on food and basic necessities.

  Chicago goes on forever.

  There’s no breathing space even in the suburbs.

  But Ice River just ends.

  One second we’re in town, passing an abandoned strip mall with boarded-up storefronts. The next, the buildings and the lights are dwindling away in the side mirror, and we’re cruising through forest and darkness, the headlights firing a cone of brilliance through a narrow corridor of tall pines that edge up close on either side of the road.

  Pavement streams under the lights.

  We pass no cars.

  I take the third turnoff, 1.2 miles north of town, down a one-lane, snowy drive that winds through spruce and birch trees to the end of a small peninsula.

  After several hundred yards, the headlights strike the front of a log house that seems to be exactly what I’m looking for.

  Like most lakefront residences in this part of the state, it’s dark and appears uninhabited.

  Shuttered for the season.

  I pull the Cherokee to a stop in the circular drive and kill the engine.

  It’s very dark, very quiet.

  I look over at Daniela.

  I say, “I know you don’t love the idea, but breaking in is less risky than actually creating a paper trail by renting some place.”

  The whole way up from Chicago—six hours—she’s barely spoken.

  As if in shock.

  She says, “I get it. We’re way past breaking-and-entering at this point anyway, right?”

  Opening the door, I step down into a foot of fresh snow.

  The cold is sharp.

  The air is still.

  One of the bedroom windows isn’t latched, so I don’t even have to break glass.

  —

  We carry the plastic grocery bags up onto the covered porch.

  It’s freezing inside.

  I hit the lights.

  Straight ahead, a staircase ascends into the darkness of the second floor.

  Charlie says, “This place is gross.”

  It isn’t gross so much as redolent of must and neglect.

  A vacation home in the off-season.

  We carry our bags into the kitchen and drop them on the counter and wander through the house.

  The interior décor straddles the line of cozy and dated.

  The appliances are old and white.

  The linoleum floor in the kitchen is cracking, and the hardwood floors are scuffed and creaky.

  In the living room, a largemouth bass is mounted over the brick hearth, and the walls are covered with fishing lures in frames—at least a hundred of them.

  There’s a master bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms on the second floor, one of them crammed tight with triple bunk beds.

  We eat Dairy Queen out of greasy paper bags.

  The light above us throws a harsh, naked glare on the surface of the kitchen table, but the rest of the house stands dark.

  The central heating struggles to warm the interior to a livable temperature.

  Charlie looks cold.

  Daniela is quiet, distant.

  Like she’s caught in a slow free fall into some dark place.

  She barely touches her food.

  After dinner, Charlie and I bring in armloads of wood from the front porch, and I use our fast-food bags and an old newspaper to get the fire going.

  The wood is dry and gray, several seasons old, and it quickly takes the flame.

  Soon the walls of the living room are aglow.

  Shadows flickering across the ceiling.

  We fold down the sleeper sofa for Charlie and pull it close to the hearth.

  Daniela goes to prepare our room.

  I sit next to Charlie on the end of the mattress, letting the heat from the fire wash over me.

  I say, “If you wake up in the night, throw an extra log on the fire. Maybe we can keep it going until morning, warm this place up.”

  He kicks off his Chuck Taylors and pulls his arms out of the sleeves of his hoodie. As he crawls under the covers, it hits me that he’s fifteen years old now.

  His birthday was October 21.

  “Hey,” I say. He looks at me. “Happy birthday.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I missed it.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “How was it?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “We went to the movies and out to dinner. Then I hung out with Joel and Angela.”

  “Who’s Angela?”

  “Friend.”

  “Girlfriend?” He blushes in the firelight. “So I’m dying to know—did you pass your driving test?”

  He gives up a small smile. “I am the proud owner of a learner’s permit.”

  “That’s great. So did he take you?”

  Charlie nods.

  Fuck. That hurts.

  I pull the sheets and blankets up to Charlie’s shoulders and kiss him on the forehead. It’s been years since I actually tucked my son into bed, and I try to savor the moment, to slow it down. But like all good things, it goes by so fast.

  Charlie stares up at me in the firelight, asks, “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “No. Not really. But I’m with you guys now. That’s all that matters. This other version of me…you liked him?”

  “He’s not my father.”

  “I know, but did you—?”

  “He’s not my father.”

  Rising from the sleeper sofa, I toss another log on the fire and trudge back through the kitchen toward the other end of the house, the hardwood floor cracking under my weight.

  It’s almost too cold to be sleeping in this room, but Daniela has stripped the beds upstairs and raided the closets for extra blankets.

  The walls are wood-paneled.

  A space heater glows in the corner, filling the air with the smell of scorched dust.

  A sound is coming from inside the bathroom.

  Sobbing.

  I knock on the hollow-core door.

  “Daniela?”

  I hear her catch her breath.

  “What?”

  “Can I come in?”

  She’s quiet for a moment.

  Then the lock punches out.

  I find Daniela huddled in the corner against an old clawfoot tub, her knees drawn into her chest, eyes red and swollen.

  I’ve never seen her like this—physically shaking, breaking right in front of me.

  She says, “I can’t. I just…I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “You’re right here in front of me, and I love you so much, but then I think about all those other versions of you, and—”

  “They aren’t here, Daniela.”

  “They want to be.”

  “But they’re not.”

  “I don’t know how to think or feel about this. And then I wonder…”

  She loses what little composure she had left.

  It’s like watching ice crack.

  “What do you wonder?” I ask.

  “I mean…are you even you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How
do I know you’re my Jason? You say you stepped out our door in early October, and that you didn’t see me again until this morning in the police station. But how do I know you’re the man I love?”

  I move down onto the floor.

  “Look in my eyes, Daniela.”

  She does.

  Through tears.

  “Can’t you see it’s me? Can’t you tell?”

  She says, “I can’t stop thinking about the last month with him. It makes me sick.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Jason, don’t do that to me. Don’t do it to you.”

  “Every day I was in that corridor, in the box, trying to find my way home—I thought about the two of you. I tried not to, but put yourself in my place.”

  Daniela opens her knees, and as I crawl between them, she pulls me in close against her chest and runs her fingers through my hair.

  She asks, “Do you really want to know?”

  No.

  But I have to.

  I say, “I’ll always wonder.”

  I rest my head against her.

  Feel the rise and fall of her chest.

  She says, “To be honest, it was amazing at first. The reason I remember that night you went to Ryan’s party so vividly is because of how you—he—acted when you got home. At first, I thought you were drunk, but it wasn’t that. It was like…like you were looking at me in this new way.

  “I still remember, all those years ago, the first time we made love in my loft. I was lying in bed, naked, waiting for you. And you just stood at the end of the bed for a minute and stared at me. It felt like it was the first time you had really seen me. Maybe the first time anyone had ever really seen me. It was the hottest thing.

  “This other Jason looked at me like that, and there was this new energy between us. Kind of like how it feels when you come home after a weekend at one of your conferences, but way more intense.”

  I ask, “So with him, it must’ve been like the first time we were together?”

  She doesn’t answer right away.

  Just breathes for a while.

  Then says finally, “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “After a couple weeks, it hit me that this wasn’t a one-night, or even one-weekend, kind of thing. I realized that something in you had changed.”

  “What was different?”

  “A million little things. The way you dressed. The way you got ready in the morning. The things you talked about at dinner.”

  “The way I fucked you?”