by Claudia Gray
Theo and I glance at each other; he’s as bewildered as I am. This outstrips any of our research at home. I ask Paul, “What do they have to do to all those dimensions?”
Paul speaks gently, as if he could soften what he says next. “Destroy them.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing face-to-face with versions of my parents gone pale as ash.
Paul gave me the directions to find them. This apartment must be what counts as luxury in this dimension, but to me it looks bare and soulless: no houseplants, no chalkboard wall scribbled with equations, no piles of books. I could almost believe my parents had chosen to live in a hotel room instead of a family home—it’s that impersonal and cold.
“You tried to find your version of Theodore Beck, didn’t you?” Mom is doing that thing where she’s really mad but is trying to hold it back for a Reasonable Discussion. “Below is dangerous, sweetheart. You shouldn’t have—”
I don’t need to hear it. “I found Theo. And Paul.”
My parents exchange a glance. Dad says, “I suppose you’re not going to tell us where they are.”
“No, I’m not. You’re going to tell me what . . . what you’re going to do about Josie.”
I don’t repeat what Paul told me out loud because I still don’t believe it. I can’t.
My father looks like he doesn’t know what to say, or that he’s too ashamed to say it. Mom, however, has regained her poise. The only sign of her discomfort is the way she hugs herself, as if she were trying to keep back the nonexistent cold. “Journeys through the dimensions are dangerous, even for a perfect traveler. Of course we don’t have to tell you that; you’ve faced considerable dangers yourself. Surely, at some point, you’ve asked yourself whether these journeys shouldn’t be abandoned completely.”
I have, but the doubts have never been more than a whisper in the back of my mind. The amazing things I’ve been able to see—the different selves I’ve been, and gotten to know in other worlds—for me, that outweighs the scary parts. So far.
“After Josie’s death, we first thought we should abandon the project altogether,” Mom continues. “The risks were too high to justify mere curiosity, or even technological advancement. But then your father and I spoke with Wyatt Conley, and we realized we had a new goal. One worth any cost. Worth every sacrifice.”
“You want Josie back,” I say. “But what are you going to do to make that happen?”
I want them to contradict me, to repeat that re-creating Josie after her splintering is an impossibility. Or if it isn’t, to tell me the solution is something justifiable.
But from the way my parents go still, I know Paul told me the truth. Triad may be motivated by sincere love for my sister—but their plans are more horrible than anything my Wyatt Conley ever dreamed of.
My mother walks closer, standing directly in front of me. “Marguerite, the splinters of Josie’s soul are scattered too widely for us to collect. But if that dimension could no longer contain her—”
“Because it ceased to exist?” I ask.
After a moment, my dad nods. “Nothing less would work.”
I’m unnerved in a way that feels like physical disorientation, like the entire planet began spinning on a completely new axis. My whole life, I’ve joked about “Mom’s crazy theories,” though I always knew they weren’t crazy, just way out there. But what I see in my mother’s face now—and in my father’s, too—it’s insanity.
Not the metaphorical kind. Real, true madness has claimed them both.
“You can’t destroy an entire dimension.” I explain this slowly, like somehow that will help them understand. “Even if it weren’t completely evil—I mean, how? There’s no bomb big enough to take out a universe, much less several of them.”
“Marguerite, think.” Mom goes into professor mode, startlingly familiar in this bizarre moment. “Resonances between the dimensions are remarkably sensitive, as you should know. Remember, they can only be altered to create a perfect traveler once in each dimension.”
I’ve never understood the scientific explanation behind “resonances,” but the implications are clear. “Sensitive means—fragile. Breakable.”
Dad smiles, encouraging despite his strain, the way he acted when I kept having trouble learning to ride a bike. “And each universe strains to achieve perfect balance. All we have to do is return it to its fundamental symmetry.”
The memory of my walk in Muir Woods with Paul comes back so vividly I can smell the forest air. He stood in one small patch of light as he told me about the way that fundamental symmetry broke at the very dawn of creation. If it hadn’t—if matter and antimatter were equal, gravity and antigravity too—then the universe would destroy itself in an instant. We wouldn’t even know the disaster was happening—had happened—because time would collapse too.
“How do you do that? How is it even possible?” I whisper.
“The device is surprisingly simple,” my father says. “Bit of a surprise nobody thought of it before. Then again, if anyone did think of it, they had the sense not to build it.”
I grab at the only hope I see. “But you can’t bring a device to another universe! Only consciousness can travel between dimensions. Not matter.”
“Not most matter.” My mother points to the Firebird hanging around my neck. “We’ve been experimenting with various alloys and compounds. It won’t be long before we’re able to construct a device that can travel as easily as the Firebird. Though, of course, not just anyone can activate it. Most people would be erased in the universe’s collapse, without being able to escape.”
“Only a perfect traveler,” I say.
Finally it all makes sense. I knew Conley was too fixated on me, that there were too many other ways for him to get his dirty work done for him. What I didn’t know was just how dirty the work would be.
“Wait, wait, wait.” I form the time-out sign with my hands. “You mean, you want me to destroy entire universes?”
“Josie shattered into many pieces, too fragmentary to collect. But it wouldn’t be impossible to travel to each of those worlds. After all, you needn’t stay long.” Mom puts a hand on my shoulder, a touch meant to soothe that instead makes my skin crawl. “You won’t be killing anyone, Marguerite. The entire dimension will simply be erased from the multiverse. No one will feel any pain. No one will even know.”
When a dimension died, it would take its entire history with it. The people within it wouldn’t die; they would never have been born.
I think of the Warverse, of Josie as a fighter pilot. Or my parents as military researchers trying their hardest to keep their country’s hopes alive. Of Theo as the soldier who sneaked into my room at night and searched for moments of romance in that gray, scary time.
Of that world’s Lieutenant Markov, who loved me so deeply, even when he knew I’d played him for a fool.
I don’t dare return to that dimension, which means I’ll never see any of those people again. But they deserve to lead their own lives and find their own fates. To have their chance to win the war, and survive.
And as much as it would hurt to learn that any of those people in the Warverse were dead, it would be infinitely worse to know that they had never been.
“You don’t even understand what you’re asking me to do.” My voice shakes. “Destroying a dimension—that would be worse than genocide.” They want me to destroy entire species, planets, stars, countless galaxies.
“Perhaps destroy is the wrong word,” Dad says, like a change in vocabulary would fix this. “Think of it as ‘unmaking’ the dimensions, and that’s really much closer to the mark.”
They’re so far gone they can’t even see it. I strike out with the first thing that comes to mind. “Josie would never accept this. Even if you succeeded, and you put her back together again, she would hate you for what you’d done.”
“I feel sure Josephine will see reason,” my father says, with the same tone of voice he used when he and Mom didn’t let Josie get h
er ears pierced a third time.
My mother adds, “Keep in mind that Josephine traveled far longer than you have. She’s seen how many versions there are of us, in all the worlds. One version more or less in the multiverse makes very little difference, mathematically speaking.”
“This is bigger than math! You can’t just swap one of us out for another!”
Mom seems almost irritated by my lack of comprehension. “All versions of us are the same person, on a very important level. Haven’t you seen that yet? Your Paul Markov—isn’t he the same one you love in every world, everywhere?”
Once I would have said yes. Now I know the truth is more complicated. As much as each version has in common with all the others, we’re still unique. Every single one of us, everywhere, is irreplaceable.
“Your universe is safe,” Mom says. That shouldn’t make me feel better on any level, but it does. I’m coward enough to be glad we’re not first on the chopping block. “Perfect travelers are a scarce resource. We can’t go unmaking them right and left.”
“You can see now why we need to keep the technology under wraps,” Dad chimes in. “If every dimension had this power, can you imagine the warfare that would result?”
I shake my head. “But if you’re the only dimension with this power, it’s not a war. It’s just a slaughter.”
“You make it sound so diabolical,” Dad says, as if it isn’t.
“Please, sweetheart, think this over after you’ve had a chance to calm down.” My mother is openly pleading with me, in a way she never has before. Despite everything, she’s enough like my real mom that seeing her this way makes my heart hurt. “We want to work with you. We want to make this the best it can be for everyone involved. And we can give you so much.”
“Like what?” The technology to turn our dimension into a hideous collage of Goya and Warhol, like theirs? That’s supposed to make up for turning me into a mass murderer?
She pauses; her eyes meet my dad’s. So Mom isn’t looking directly at me when she says, “We want to protect you, Marguerite. You’re our daughter too. But—if it came to it—Conley could travel to a new dimension and create another perfect traveler there.”
I know what she means the instant she says it. But it’s like my brain refuses that knowledge. Instead, I flush hot all over, and my stomach cramps, as if I drank poison that has to get out of me now, because if it stays inside it will destroy me.
My parents would kill my universe. They would kill me. All because one version is as good as another, because they think we’re all fungible, replaceable, disposable—
“You know that wouldn’t be easy for us,” Dad says, straightening. “We didn’t bring you to this dimension on a whim. You needed to learn the truth, though we’d hoped to break it to you more gently than this.”
I spit my reply back at him. “There’s no ‘gentle’ way to tell me to kill billions of people.”
He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “Take your time. Think things over. Discuss it with us back at home! When you fully comprehend the difference between death and nonexistence—that none of those people would suffer the way Josephine suffered—”
Dad’s voice chokes on a sob. My mother grabs his hand as he closes his eyes tightly. Somehow this is the worst of all—seeing that they’re still my parents, still capable of love and compassion, and yet willing to order the death of worlds.
“I’m leaving,” I say, backing toward the door. “Don’t come after me.”
By this I mean, don’t follow me to the hallway, and definitely don’t follow me to my own world. But they don’t chase me. Mom and Dad simply stand there, looking sadder than I’ve ever seen them look in their lives.
They’re not only feeling sorry for themselves, though, or for the daughter who died. Mostly they feel sorry for me.
I could jump out of this universe where I stand; instead, I go out the door. That way I can slam it behind me and create the illusion that they can’t chase me, that I can leave everything I’ve learned here behind.
But they can follow me anywhere, and they will, until they get what they want. Or else they’ll destroy my entire world.
27
WITH SHAKING HANDS, I SET THE COORDINATES MY PARENTS gave me—the ones that are supposed to lead to the final splinter of my Paul’s soul. I close my eyes, press down—
—and slam into myself just in time to wobble out of control.
I’m riding a bike, I think, in the split second before I crash into a ditch.
Groaning, I scoot out from under my bicycle to see my knee red and raw, tiny droplets of blood beginning to bead up. Someone walking nearby says, in an English accent, “You all right, love?”
Honestly, at the moment, it’s almost a relief to have my biggest problem be a skinned knee. “I’m fine, thank you.”
That came out with an English accent too. Do I live in London in this world as well? Seems really green for that . . .
I look up and recognize where I am right away. Most people wouldn’t, but most people didn’t grow up surrounded by graduate students, who often carried brochures from the best physics departments in the world while they tried to figure out where to do their postdoc work.
When I see the Bridge of Sighs, I know I’m in Cambridge.
This makes sense. Both my mother and my father could easily have wound up teaching here; in this world, they did. Now I have to figure out what else has changed.
My first task on leaping into a new dimension is always to understand the essentials as best I can: where I am, who I am. In this case, I desperately want to find Paul right away. I need him more than I ever have before. But for a moment I can only sit there in the grass, shaking, thinking of the lunatic versions of my parents I just left behind and what they want from me.
Green trees. The beautiful old university. Faraway sounds of traffic. Students laughing as they run across the grass. Triad might destroy this universe too.
Focus, I tell myself. Freak out later. Find Paul now. Start by learning about this world.
First I take a look at what I’m wearing: denim skirt, knee socks, Mary Janes, and a scratchy gray woolen sweater (should I say jumper)? Ordinary enough, if a little plainer than what I’d usually pick on my own. I like the floral scarf around my neck, though. The bicycle looks like one I’d pick in my world too—old-fashioned with fat tires, painted a happy shade of turquoise.
My purse is a cross-body bag in black leather; I open it up to see what I find. My hand and arm hurt as I riffle through things; maybe I banged myself up worse in the crash than I thought. This Marguerite must be more practical than I am, and thank goodness, because one of the first things I pull out is a Band-Aid. I put it over the skinned place on my knee, then go back to searching. Lipstick: some brand I don’t know called Sisley, but about the same color I’d wear at home. Sunglasses, cheap drugstore version, which is what I always buy because I never go more than two months without losing a pair. An e-reader—not a model I’m familiar with, but I can figure out how it works later. My phone, rock on. When I check to see whether it’s a tPhone, however, I’m momentarily confused; in this world, I seem to own something called an iPhone. I wonder who makes this one.
And, yes, a wallet. I open it up to find a driver’s license, complete with address. Plenty of British money, the queen staring serenely at me from bills in different sizes and colors.
A red mark mars the skin of my right wrist. When I push up the sleeve of my sweater, I reveal a long, livid scar. It’s not grotesque or anything, but the sight still makes me wince in sympathetic pain. From the look of it, this happened sometime in the past several months; maybe the scar will fade over time.
But when I close my fist, I feel the ache quivering up my arm and realize how serious the injury was. More than the skin was broken. This tore through muscle and bone.
Still, it’s obviously healing, and for now I can manage. I start spelunking through the phone, which turns out to have as intuitive an OS as my own tPhone
back home. The camera shows plenty of pictures of my family—Josie too, I’m relieved to see—and various friends I haven’t made in my own dimension.
But a quick search shows no pictures of Paul, and none of Theo.
Time to search contacts. Nope, neither of them is listed.
Josie is, though—and after learning what happened to her in the Home Office, I need to talk to her. So I go ahead and hit dial. After a few rings she answers, out of breath. “Marge?”
Marge? Thank God my Josie never thought of that nickname. “Hey. How are you?”
“Well, I’m fine.” She sounds so weird with an English accent. “Is something wrong at home?”
“No, no!” Hopefully that’s true. “I just—I don’t know—I wanted to talk to you.”
Her voice gentles. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. But I was wondering how things were with you.”
“I’m having the greatest time.” It’s as if I can see Josie’s grin. “The River Findhorn is seriously underrated for its whitewater rafting—it’s brilliant, Marge. Absolutely brilliant!”
Doesn’t matter how different the accent is. This is definitely the Josie I know. “Glad you’re having fun.”
“You’ll have to come up with me next time. I know you’re not sporty, but I promise, you’d adore it. And—I really do think you could manage. Despite everything.”
Once again I glance at the nasty scar on my wrist. “Next time’s a promise.” What the hell. I bet this Marguerite would enjoy rafting too. And surely whatever’s wrong with my arm will improve sooner or later.
“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Josie obviously finds it weird that I called her in the middle of her big adventure for no reason.
I try to cover. “Really, it is. But—um—last night I had this weird dream where you were gone, and I guess it made me miss you.”
After a long moment, Josie laughs. “You’d never admit that to my face.”
“Nope. So enjoy it now.”
A little more chitchat—mostly about the smoking-hot Scotsman leading the rafting party—and then Josie hangs up. Simply hearing her voice for a few minutes was enough to make me feel better; it’s like I have her back again.