Infinite

by Brian Freeman

  Physically, I was tired from running and from lack of sleep. I’d barely made it out of the neighborhood without being captured, but fortunately, I knew the area better than the police did, from my teenage days exploring the riverbank with Roscoe. I assumed they’d be looking for me throughout the city now. The serial killer, on the loose. Get him before he kills again.

  A bus took me downtown. When I got off, I stopped at a twenty-four-hour convenience store to clean myself up. I assumed it wasn’t safe to use any of my credit cards, but fortunately, my wallet was flush with cash. I shaved and washed my hair and sponged off the sweat. I bought a pair of sunglasses, but the whole effect didn’t make for much of a disguise. From there, with my head down and my mind spinning, I walked the empty streets to the pier.

  I’d been waiting for an hour now. I was getting nervous about staying in one place for so long. I’d called Eve Brier, but I didn’t know if she would come, or whether she’d send the police after me instead. But when I glanced down the pier, I saw her heading my way, her steps quick and determined.

  She wore a knee-length navy-blue dress, which the fierce wind was playing with, plus the same dark trench coat she’d worn when we met in Grant Park. She had a beret tugged low on her forehead, and she had to keep it in place with one hand while her long hair swirled around her face. She sat down on the bench a couple of feet away from me, as if we were strangers, which we still were. At least to me. Her eyes were lost in the lake, but then she turned to stare at me with a passionate intensity.

  “Tell me again what you said on the phone.”

  “Because you don’t believe it?” I asked.

  “That’s right. I don’t believe it, because it’s impossible.”

  “Think that if you want, but there are two of me. Two Dylan Morans in the same world, sharing the same space. You brought him here.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he used your safe word to get away. Infinite.”

  “My treatment couldn’t possibly make that happen.”

  “I think you’re wrong. I think your therapy opened the door, and somehow another Dylan Moran walked through it. He’s a killer. The police showed me photographs of the women he killed. Four of them—all of them look just like Karly. Now he’s gone somewhere else to do it again.”

  She reached out her long arm to stroke my hair, invading my personal space as if I were a pet. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s all you.”

  “I’m not a killer. I’m many things, but I’m not that. Not in this world.”

  Eve took away her hand and looked off at the lake again. “If you’re right about this, the implications are . . . disturbing.”

  “Why are you surprised? You said the whole point of this therapy was to create a bridge to other worlds.”

  “Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about—”

  “I’m talking about a Dylan Moran who is dangerous. Eve, you said that I came to you for treatment. If the Many Worlds theory is right, there are endless other Dylans going to you for the same treatment in other worlds. Imagine that this doppelgänger—this violent Dylan—became aware of what was happening. He interacted with one of your patients and followed him into a completely new world. Into a hunting ground. He could kill without worrying about getting caught, because all the evidence would point to the Dylan who really lived in that world. And he had an escape hatch whenever he wanted to leave. You. He’s been using you to come and go, Eve. Who knows how many times he’s already done this and in how many different worlds? It’s the perfect crime.”

  Eve frowned. “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “Follow him and stop him before he kills anyone else.”

  “Into the Many Worlds?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head firmly. “You can’t. The rules say that even if you find him, all the choices come into play. That means you can never stop him. There will always be a world where he gets away.”

  “Maybe, but the rules also say you can’t jump between timelines. He’s breaking the rules. For all we know, he’s the only Dylan who has figured out how to do that.”

  “What if he stops you? What if you don’t make it back?”

  I stared at the city around me. My city. My home. “I’m done here, Eve. There’s nothing for me anymore. Roscoe is gone. Karly is gone. When the police catch up to me, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison. It doesn’t matter whether I come back.”

  “This won’t work,” Eve insisted. “You can’t actually cross over to these worlds.”

  “Well, if I don’t try it, some other Dylan will, right? You said that every choice comes into play. So it might as well be me. Did you bring the drugs?”

  Eve glanced around the pier to make sure the two of us were alone. She reached into her handbag and extracted a small vial of clear liquid and a hypodermic needle. “This is what I use.”

  “How does this work?”

  “Once I inject you, I guide you into the Many Worlds with hypnotic suggestion. You won’t be aware of it happening.”

  “What are you giving me?”

  “It’s a cocktail of hallucinogens. I’ve been experimenting with the mix since college to find a balance that makes the brain most susceptible to alternate realities. That’s the key, you see. We all grow up convinced that we know what reality is, and the only way to cross over is to break down that certainty. To open the mind to completely new possibilities.”

  “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I said.

  Eve gave me a tight smile. “In a way.”

  “What will it be like?”

  “The first time can be overwhelming,” she warned me. “Whatever it is you see with your eyes, what you’re really doing is going to the inner depths of your brain. Like you’re at a kind of Grand Central Station, where the various versions of yourself cross paths. I don’t know what you’ll see, but the sensory overload may well be too much for you. If it is, you know the safe word to get out.”

  “Infinite.”

  “That’s right. If you say the word, it should break you out of wherever you are and end the session.”

  “And take me right back here?” I asked.

  “It will take you somewhere. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’ve always assumed that the Dylan I sent out into the void was the same Dylan who came back to me. But now I don’t know if that’s true. For all I know, some other Dylan will end up here on the bench with me in a few seconds. I won’t be aware of it. And nothing else will seem to have changed.”

  “I hate to think that I’d be handing my bad choices to someone else,” I said with a smile.

  Eve’s face turned severe. “Don’t joke. You act like this situation can’t get worse for you, Dylan. It can. It can get much worse. And remember, wherever you go, another Dylan is already there. It’s his life, not yours.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you should remember what I said before. You might find yourself tempted to stay. You might want to kill that other version of yourself and take over his world.”

  “I’m not a killer,” I insisted again.

  “Are you sure?”

  I didn’t answer her. I stared at the sun, getting higher over the water. The city was coming to life. Soon people would be coming down the pier. Impatiently, I rolled up my sleeve. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Eve readied the needle. She drew in the liquid from the vial and tapped the hypodermic with one of her fingernails. She slid closer to me on the bench and took hold of my wrist, pushing on the seam of my arm to find the vein. When she found it, she put the metal point against my skin.

  “Last chance,” she said.

  “Do it.”

  I felt the puncture like the prick of a bee sting. She pushed the plunger down.

  For a brief moment, the world stayed the same. Nothing happened. I was Dylan Moran, I was on Navy Pier, I was sitting on a bench with Dr. Eve Brier. A part of me was gripped by hesitation, w
anting to hold on to this world, but it was too late to stop. My bloodstream carried the drug throughout my body, and it washed over me like a wave rolling across sand. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I wasn’t on the pier anymore. Wherever I was traveling, I was far away.

  I heard a chorus, like a billion whispers, each one soft, but together so loud that I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. I saw nothing at first. Whiteness. Blackness. Then something took shape in front of me. Something physical. Something familiar. I saw a diner on a clean city street. It was late, and I could see bright lights through the window. A man sat alone at the counter, a lonely urban stranger. Suit. Fedora. His back was to me. Near him, but not with him, were two others, a man and a woman. He was in a suit like the first man. She had red hair and a red dress.

  This wasn’t real.

  This was a painting that I’d seen thousands of times before.

  I was in the Art Institute, staring at Nighthawks.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Sometimes I’ll look at this painting for hours,” a voice next to me said. “I don’t know what it is, but it just sucks me inside. Funny story, actually. This painting wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my grandfather. When he was a kid, he accidentally bumped into the museum director and saved him from getting killed in a car accident. The director bought Nighthawks from Edward Hopper the next year.”

  I glanced at the man who was talking. He had a casual smile, which was not like my smile at all. He wore a gray collarless T-shirt with a few buttons at the neck. His stonewashed jeans were frayed. He had a full beard in serious need of a trim, and his brown hair was wildly messy, sticking up in a dozen places. I wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like that, but regardless, it was me.

  Me but not me. A double. A twin.

  “I think I’ve heard that story before,” I told him.

  He looked at me, but his face showed no reaction, as if he saw nothing strange about encountering an exact likeness of himself. Or maybe he didn’t even notice. “Oh, yeah? You’ve met Edgar? Well, he comes here a lot. He’ll tell the story to anybody he meets.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Do you come here a lot, too?”

  “Me? Not so much anymore. I moved away from Chicago a couple of years ago. Too many people, too much winter. I tried to get Edgar to go with me, but he’s a stubborn old mule, wouldn’t leave the city. I’m on the sand near Cocoa now. Pick up odd jobs here and there, but it’s all about the waves.”

  “Surfing?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Well, that’s one way to live,” I said, absolutely horrified.

  “Yeah. Best thing I ever did.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Dylan Moran. Ex-Chicagoan turned beach bum.”

  “My name’s Dylan, too,” I replied.

  “Small world.”

  “Very small.”

  I looked around at the rest of the museum. Every detail matched my memory, every painting looking as vivid as the original, every window in the skylight and every angled floorboard under my feet looking unchanged. It seemed impossible to me that my mind could replicate the entire museum in an instant, but here I was. Except where were all the other versions of myself?

  Surfer Dylan and I were alone.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said to him.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I was wondering if you’d seen him. Choppy dark hair, heavy five-o’clock shadow, mean smile. He likes to wear a beat-up old leather biker jacket with stains on it.”

  The other Dylan’s smile disappeared. “Man, you don’t want to find him. He’s bad news.”

  “Yeah? Why is that?”

  “Word gets around. That dude’s trouble. Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned around, I saw another Dylan Moran walk into the gallery. This one had a completely shaved head, wore a black turtleneck, and had silver circular glasses on his face. Everything about him was neat and orderly. He wandered past us without a word to a nearby painting, Peter Blume’s surrealistic The Rock. The centerpiece of the painting was a jagged sphere, like a pink geode cut open, around which men were laboring with hammers and stone slabs. A lone woman on her knees grasped for the sphere, as if worshipping it. Bald Dylan stood with perfect posture as he examined the painting, his hands folded together in front of him. Every now and then, he leaned forward to study a particular detail.

  “This is a working man’s painting,” I said, joining him.

  He studied me with a serious expression, but like Surfer Dylan, he showed no recognition that we were twins. “Yes, my father used to say this painting was about the ennoblement of the union man.”

  “I can’t remember my father ever going to the museum.”

  “No? My father worked here until he retired. He was an art historian. Actually, the museum runs in the family in a way. His father was the reason we got Nighthawks here.”

  “Daniel Catton Rich? The car accident?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard the story. Yes, that’s right.”

  “Is your father still alive?” I asked.

  “He is. We lost my mother last year, though. Cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, her dying brought my father and me closer together. I don’t think either one of us would have made it through that time without the other.”

  I tried to imagine a world in which my father hadn’t killed my mother. A world in which they’d both been with me as I grew up, in which my father didn’t drink and took me places and made me a part of his life. I knew nothing else about this Dylan next to me, but I already knew that I envied him.

  I began to understand what Eve Brier had warned me about.

  You might be tempted to stay.

  Around me, more Dylans arrived at the museum. Half a dozen. Twenty. Forty. I soon lost count. They were all completely different and yet all the same. They wore different clothes. Some had beards; some didn’t. Some were heavier than me, some skinnier. One was in a wheelchair. One had an artificial right leg. Some looked almost identical to me, just a few little changes to tell me that a part of their life was different from mine.

  But I saw no Dylan wearing my father’s leather jacket.

  I wandered through the museum as it got more and more crowded. We kept bumping into each other, all the Dylan Morans squeezed into every wing. Near the American Gothic display, I saw one Dylan stop in the middle of the gallery as others streamed around him. He was dressed exactly the way I was, in a slightly rumpled blazer, dirty slacks, and loose tie. Tears streamed down his reddened face, and his chest heaved with despair.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  His mouth fell open. He unleashed a guttural cry that was pure agony. He stared at me, consumed by pain. “Karly’s dead.”

  The words nearly knocked me over. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t live without her. I can’t.”

  Tragic Dylan reached into the pocket of his suit coat and removed an automatic pistol, which he armed by racking the slide. Instinctively, I took a step backward and put my hands up.

  “Dylan, put the gun away.”

  He shook his head and continued to sob. As I watched, he opened his mouth and closed his lips around the barrel of the gun. His hand quivered as he slid his finger onto the trigger. Mucus dripped from his nose, and drool leaked onto the barrel. His screwed-up face looked like a version of The Scream, as if he were one more painting in the museum.

  “Dylan, no! No, don’t do it!” I looked around at the others; there were hundreds of them now. “Somebody help over here!”

  But no one stopped. No one even noticed the drama playing out.

  The Dylan in front of me squeezed the trigger. The bullet blew out the back of his skull, spraying the Dylans behind him with bone, blood, and brain matter. They didn’t react; they just kept walking with their clothes and faces covered wi
th the remains of another man’s head. Tragic Dylan crumpled to the floor in front of me. The others walked on top of him as if he wasn’t there at all. Blood spread into a pool on the museum’s wooden floor, getting on everyone’s shoes.

  I shoved through the crowd, because I had to get away from here. I needed air, but my surroundings grew claustrophobic as the room filled with more Dylans. I had to fight my way forward, wrestling people aside. All the Dylans around me did the same thing, each one seemingly oblivious to the others.

  Finally, in the atrium near the museum’s grand staircase, I found a railing where I could lean and catch my breath. The marble statue of Samson and the Lion loomed immediately behind me. Blinding sunshine poured through the skylights overhead. The atrium was filled with a strange sound, a susurrus made up of tiny noises—clothing brushing together, heels tapping on stone—that combined into a deafening assault on my senses. I wanted to shut it out, because it was simply so loud, but covering my ears did nothing to quiet the tumult.

  Eve had warned me about this part of the experience, too. The first time was overwhelming.

  I was tempted to say it. Infinite. Say the word, and this chaos would be over. I’d go back to my version of reality, where there was only one of me. But it was a reality where Karly was dead and I was wanted for murder.

  Then I looked down.

  I saw him.

  Where the four staircases from the museum’s top floor converged on a square landing below me, I saw a single Dylan among a thousand others, standing absolutely motionless. The others yielded to give him space. The sea of doubles parted around him.

  He wore my father’s jacket.

  As I stared down at him, he looked up and saw me. His sea-blue eyes were clear and cold. His lips formed a smile of cruel, violent intent as he recognized me. We knew each other. A wave of sadism engulfed me, and I knew this was the man who’d whispered to me near the river, who’d hidden inside my bedroom closet and confessed his crimes to the police, who’d stabbed the hearts of at least four women who looked like Karly.