Multiversum

by Leonardo Patrignani

  I’m afraid, Alex, thought Jenny.

  It was at that moment that their eyes flew to the sky: the fiery trail that the asteroid was tracing over their heads suddenly veered earthwards. It took no more than a couple of seconds: the red-and-yellow wake that had just penetrated the atmosphere widened rapidly and vanished behind the mountains of Bergamo that rose on the distant horizon. If there had been roars capable of drowning out all other sounds before this, the sound that ensued this time was a hundred times louder. The shock wave was terrifying, so powerful that it shook the earth beneath their feet as if someone out in space were shaking the planet like a giant snow globe, to create a toy blizzard of shredded plastic. An enormous cloud of smoke rose from the other side of the mountains and started pushing into the sky, as Jenny and Alex stood watching the scene in amazement, holding each other tight.

  ‘We’re out of time!’ shouted Alex, turning to Jenny and staring her in the eye. The fury of the wind seemed like the powerful breath of an invisible giant that was hurling flames in their direction from the countryside.

  ‘This is the end,’ she whispered, as she clutched the triskelion in her hands and lost herself in Alex’s eyes.

  ‘I love you, Jenny,’ Alex said, his eyes shining. He was trembling with fear.

  ‘I love you too. I always have …’ she said, leaning into him, both hands on his chest, as their lips met in one last kiss. A moment out of time, a promise of eternal union. They kissed as if for the first time. As if they were on Altona Pier, alone in that silent, magical place, with the waves all around them. But there was no constellation of Orion watching over them.

  They suddenly both opened their eyes wide.

  ‘We’re going to burn, Jenny! We have to jump,’ said Alex as he worked his way around the last barrier at the edge of the cliff. She grabbed his hand even tighter; she’d never let it go, for anything on earth.

  ‘One …’

  A gust of heat enveloped them, as if the asteroid had opened a gash in the Earth’s atmosphere so large that it could no longer stand up to the sun’s rays.

  ‘Two …’

  Alex and Jenny looked down at the abyss beneath their feet, as dozens more fireballs shot across the sky, as if in some gigantic fireworks show. These fragments had broken away from the asteroid at the moment of impact with the Earth’s atmosphere, and now they were hurtling in all directions at immense velocities: hundreds of atomic bombs poised to raze the continent to the ground. The most incredible manifestation of her infinite power that Nature had ever displayed to humanity. The cosmos’s ultimate demonstration of its power, as if to emphasise the crushing superiority of the laws of the universe over the insignificance of the human race.

  Alex shouted: ‘Three!’ and Jenny’s hand practically became one with his.

  With a brief running start they leaped into the void, just an instant before a burst of incandescent rock projectiles ravaged everything around them, burning the words ‘game over’ onto the remnants of the history of civilisation.

  As they fell, the most intense images and memories of their lives played in their heads.

  There was Roger Graver telling little Jenny the stories of the constellations, using funny voices and dramatic gestures to impersonate the gods of Olympus.

  There was Marco, a broad smile on his face, his colour-coded remote controls in his hands, grilling Alex on what functions each control performed.

  There was Clara preparing her delicious herbal teas when Jenny had a stomach ache, caressing her and making her burst out laughing every time her finger grazed her belly button.

  There were Giorgio and Valeria Loria, sitting in the front row during the primary-school skit, when Alex had played D’Artagnan and won a standing ovation from all the parents.

  Then, in an instant, everything went black.

  40

  The first sensation was the smell of leather. It filtered into Alex’s nostrils as he did his best to focus on the blurred shadows all around him. He was surrounded by indistinct colours and overlapping voices. His head felt heavy, while his back seemed to be crushed hard against the floor. When he began to sense the nervous tension in his muscles again, he strained to lift his neck. The worried faces of his teammates took shape, one after another. His right arm was clutching the basketball, pressing it to his ribs. He let it go and slowly got to his feet, while a stabbing pain shot from one temple to the other.

  ‘Captain, are you okay?’ asked a voice to his right.

  Alex said nothing. His eyes met the referee’s, looking at him with a worried expression. The air in the gymnasium was foul, and the stink of sweat washed over him suddenly, taking him right back into the centre of a scene that seemed to belong to a very distant past. The free throw. The game. His fainting spell.

  I’m alive … we’re all alive.

  Once he was back on his feet, he ran his hand through his hair, sweeping back his blond fringe, while the referee came over and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ As he replied, the features of Jenny’s face appeared in his mind. Her hazel eyes, her golden skin, and that smile that he might never see again. Or that he might never even have seen at all. ‘I don’t understand …’

  The referee, in his black uniform with a whistle around his neck, cocked an eyebrow. He picked up the basketball from the floor and handed it to Alex. ‘Are you up for this? There’s just ten seconds left to play in the game. Then I’ll take you to the school doctor.’

  Alex nodded, took the basketball, and readied himself to shoot from the key. His teammates continued to stare at him with strange, perplexed expressions. The shot fell short and barely brushed the net, well under the hoop. The ball bounced past the backboard and came to a stop out of bounds, next to the blue mats. Alex stood there, staring at it. The captain of the opposing team grabbed it, then put it back into play, aggressively. As he stayed frozen to the spot in offensive territory, the other team nailed a three-pointer, pulling ahead decisively, and they celebrated jubilantly. A few seconds later, the referee whistled an end to the game. Alex lowered his head, baffled and confused. His teammates gave him dirty looks as they filed off the court and out of the gymnasium. One of them shook his head. Another approached Alex with a look of pity on his face: ‘Is everything okay, captain?’

  ‘How long was I on the floor?’ he asked, as they headed back to the locker room.

  ‘I don’t know, twenty, maybe thirty seconds, I guess…’ His friend frowned. ‘You okay?’

  It couldn’t have been a dream, that’s absurd …

  Alex said nothing and let his teammate move on. When he saw the referee heading in his direction, he held up his left hand and looked away. ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.’

  While the rest of the team walked down the tunnel to the locker rooms, Alex noticed his backpack sitting on the floor next to the coach’s bench. He picked it up and disappeared through a door. Then he climbed the stairs to the second floor. The corridors were deserted. Clearly, the school day isn’t over yet, he thought. Alex went past the toilets, the doors of several classrooms, and finally found the staircase that led down to the main entrance of the school building. He walked down slowly, while a succession of slides were projected onto the screen of his mind, showing him everything that he’d seen after the moment he’d fainted. That had been twenty, at the most thirty seconds. As Marco always said: Dream time has nothing to do with real time.

  Mary Thompson, Altona Pier, Marco’s prepaid card, the large cardboard box with Picture Frames written on it, his father nailing a wooden board over the window, the army trucks, the triskelion around Jenny’s neck, the drawing of the asteroid, the excavation site for the shopping mall.

  Everything tumbled haphazardly through his mind. Detail after detail surfaced, as Alex walked down the street to
his home. On the way, he looked up at the sky more than once. There were clouds over Milan, but they were the usual grey clouds that loomed over the city in winter, only to be swept away in spring.

  No asteroid, no apocalyptic visions. Alex looked around as he walked, while an elderly couple eyed him curiously. He was still wearing the yellow-and-blue jersey and his basketball shorts, even though the temperature outside was only five degrees. But he didn’t feel cold at all. He only felt a sense of disorientation that every so often made him weak in the knees. The details around him were as ordinary as they were incredible. Some of the shop windows already featured Christmas decorations. A sign made up of LEDs, near the intersection of Via Porpora and Viale Lombardia, wished happy holidays to the strolling shoppers. There was the usual chaotic bustle on the streets, the unfailing chorus of car horns the instant a traffic light turned green. It was nothing more and nothing less than the same old Milan he’d always known.

  There is no such thing as the Multiverse, thought Alex as he stood outside number 22, Viale Lombardia, and pressed the button on the intercom. No one answered. It was lunchtime: his parents were probably at work. That makes sense, he thought to himself, shaking his head, the world isn’t about to end here. The ATMs all worked fine. The internet hadn’t been blacked out. People were going to work. And he kept repeating the same phrase he’d been reciting for at least ten minutes now: ‘What an idiot I am.’

  He put his hand in the outside pocket of his backpack and found the keys.

  In the usual place, just like always.

  He opened the door to the apartment building and climbed the stairs, continuing to rub his hand over his forehead as he went. Could it be that he’d dreamed the whole thing in only thirty seconds? Perhaps so, and in a way, that would be a blessing. Nothing around him had been reduced to ashes or piles of rubble. But that also meant that Jenny no longer existed.

  Anywhere.

  He walked into the apartment and glimpsed the note that his mother had placed on the table by the front door. There’s a quiche by the microwave. Do your homework! Kisses, Mamma.

  When he walked into his bedroom, he let his backpack fall on the floor next to the bed and sat down. He was in his room. Nothing different. Nothing new. Nothing strange.

  ‘In thirty seconds I managed to dream up the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life, and the most terrifying catastrophe that could possibly happen,’ he muttered, shaking his head, an ironic smile on his face.

  But he remembered every single thing about that dream. Every detail.

  She can’t not exist, he thought as he jumped up from his bed and went over to sit down in front of his PC. He turned it on, waited for the software to load, and then typed into the Google search box: Jennifer Graver Blyth Street Melbourne.

  Among the first links that appeared, there was a Facebook profile that caught his eye. The mouse went to it as if of its own accord.

  When the profile photo loaded, Alex propped an elbow on the edge of the desk, and with his right hand he brushed back the blond hair that was falling into his eyes.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure whether he was happier to discover that Jenny was real or more horrified that the whole story hadn’t been a nightmare at all.

  In the field of the girl’s personal information there was a mobile-phone number and her email address. Alex pulled his phone out of his backpack and dialled the number.

  Silence.

  It stopped ringing.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence. Alex’s eyes closed. Jenny’s eyes were wide open, full of hope.

  ‘Alex, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, Jenny, it’s me. Then you do exist, after all.’

  ‘Definitely. And I remember exactly what happened. All of it.’

  ONE MONTH LATER

  The air was cool and there was a light, delicate breeze. The sun was sinking to the horizon, spreading orange and reddish brushstrokes across the clouds and flocks of birds swooping and diving in the sky over Barcelona.

  A young guy who was over two metres tall went whizzing past on his rollerblades, barely missing Alex and Jenny as they turned off the waterfront and onto the pier.

  ‘It’s so great that they let us come to Barcelona. It’s going to be a fantastic weekend,’ said Jenny, her eyes gleaming, her hand tight in Alex’s.

  ‘And this time I didn’t have to make up any excuses, I just asked permission. I still can’t believe it.’

  Jenny smiled and lowered her eyes. Then she looked up and scanned the horizon. The pier was protected by two lines of breakwaters, and on the right, a strip of sand stretched from the Vila Olimpica area, where they were right now, all the way to the harbour. Jenny had already seen that part of town once, on her school trip. She remembered it well.

  ‘You know, sometimes I think I must have just dreamed it all,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘I don’t hear your voice in my head anymore. But everything else is the same as it always was.’

  Alex nodded. ‘In this past month have you, I don’t know … travelled? Any leaps into other dimensions, parallel lives …’

  ‘Nothing at all. How about you?’

  He shook his head, furrowing his brow with the expression of someone who was still asking themselves a thousand questions.

  ‘If it was a dream, how could we have had the same dream?’ he asked as he stopped to contemplate the last sliver of sunshine as it vanished between the sky and the ocean.

  Jenny took him by the hand and turned around, without answering. They walked back along the pier, heading for the beach. When they were on the waterfront walkway, they sat down on a bench and stayed silent for a couple of minutes, while the air in the Catalonian capital gradually grew sharper.

  ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I’ve thought a lot about it in the past few days. If the whole thing about the asteroid was true, then how do you explain the fact that the reality we wound up in is identical to the one we came from?’

  ‘Yeah. I go to the same school every morning, on Saturday I have swimming practice with the same teammates, my parents are fine, and the furniture and decor of my house hasn’t changed one bit.’

  ‘Same thing in Milan. In the past month, I haven’t noticed a single detail out of place. If we’ve saved ourselves from the end of the world and we’ve wound up in a parallel universe where the asteroid never hit the planet, how can it be that our lives aren’t even slightly different?’

  Jenny stood looking out into the distance while Alex kept insisting: ‘It doesn’t make any sense… it just doesn’t … Jenny? Are you listening to me?’

  ‘I … yes. Yes, of course. Sorry, I just had some kind of déjà vu, but … no. It’s nothing.’

  ‘What’s nothing?’

  ‘No, it just can’t be, come on, that’s not possible.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Down there. I thought I saw a classmate giving some money to that street artist. Can you see him?’

  Jenny tilted her head in that direction. Alex cocked his head to one side and looked past a line of children following their teacher. A young black guy was shaping a sort of amphitheatre out of sand, just behind a low wall that separated the beach from the walkway.

  ‘Yes, I see him.’

  ‘Well, I’m probably wrong. Or else it’s some sort of déjà vu, because the first time I came here, a girlfriend of mine really did give a euro to a guy just like him. Oh, forget it, it’s nothing.’

  Alex listened to Jenny with interest, then he looked up, as if to think over a detail of that episode.

  ‘You know, in fact this whole déjà-vu thing has been happening to me too, ever since I “woke up” in the gym. Among other things, when I opened my eyes again, I was on the floor, under the basket, just before a free throw.
Exactly where I was when you first told me that you lived in Melbourne. At the beginning of that whole … dream.’

  ‘Listen, Alex. I’ve got a suggestion.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Let’s just stop talking about it. Whether it was only a nightmare or everything happened exactly as we remember, it makes no real difference. We’re here, and we’re together. The world hasn’t ended, the sky is blue, and, unless that poster is lying, you can get into the casino today even if you’re underage!’

  Alex smiled and stood up. ‘You’re right. Let’s go for a walk instead.’

  Jenny grabbed his hand and let herself be pulled to her feet, then she wrapped her arms around him and let their lips brush delicately. They could savour each moment without any fear that it might be their last … They had all the time in the world; there was no mass of incandescent rock hurtling overhead.

  They walked hand in hand in the direction of the casino, full of energy and lively curiosity.

  ‘When you came here the first time, did they take you there?’ Alex asked as they crossed the street.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the casino!’

  Jenny laughed awkwardly. ‘As if! Knowing my classmates, they would’ve probably tried to break into the slot machines. No, they didn’t let us anywhere near the place.’

  ‘Is it that way?’ asked Alex as they came to a fork in the road.

  ‘I think so. That day, this was as far as I got with my friends, but unless I’m mistaken it’s right near here: we just have to turn left down there.’

  Alex held Jenny’s hand tighter as they got to the end of the road, on the opposite side to the beachfront walkway. She was laughing, dreamy and carefree. He couldn’t stop looking into her eyes. Then they both turned into the cross street.

  And suddenly they were in the midst of nothingness.

  ‘What … what the …?’ Jenny stammered. Stretching out in front of her was nothing but endless white space. Like a giant wall where your sight gets lost, with nothing for your sense of perspective to latch on to. It was a void. But it was somehow more frightening than just a void. It was as if that part of the world had been erased, swallowed by a dense white fog.