Infinite

by Brian Freeman

  “Because I would never let you go.”

  She stared down at me, trying to find answers in my face. I felt her kiss me again, slow and soft, like a fairy touch. She got to her feet and stood over me, memorizing the look of me, the way I’d memorized her.

  “Come find me, Dylan,” she murmured.

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.

  “Come find me,” she said again. “I’m still here.”

  Then she walked away, not looking back. I followed her with my eyes until the darkness of the park enveloped her. She was in her world; she had her husband and her child. I was alone again.

  I lay on my back, staring at the sky. Stars ran across the heavens in limitless numbers. There was no more pain at all. My blood was on the ground, but I doubted it would be here for long.

  My chest swelled with one last breath.

  It gave me the strength for one last word.

  “Infinite.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “Welcome back,” Eve Brier told me.

  I still lay on my back, but instead of a field of stars above me when I opened my eyes, I saw the white foam tiles of an office ceiling. Beneath me, the damp grass of River Park had been replaced by a leather sofa. Instinctively, my hands went to my abdomen, where I expected to feel blood gushing from an open wound. Not anymore. I was completely uninjured.

  With a jerk, I sat up, trying to orient myself. A little bit of nausea lingered, as well as a splitting headache. “Where am I?”

  “Hancock Center,” Eve replied. “My office.”

  She sat across the room from me in a cushioned roller chair near a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. Behind her, I could see the expanse of Lake Michigan, a view that was interrupted by one of the building’s huge diagonal crossbeams. On the horizon, the blue of the water met the blue of the sky.

  Eve cocked her head over her bony shoulders. She had an enigmatic smile on her face. Her almond-shaped eyes still looked alien. She had a pen in her hands that she stroked in an oddly suggestive manner. Her lush blond-and-brown hair swept messily across her shoulders. She pulled her chair close to the sofa and leaned forward, looking at me with an intense, curious expression.

  “Did you go there?”

  I knew what she meant. “The Many Worlds? Yes, I did.”

  “Was it what you imagined?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her. I got off the sofa and had to brace myself, because my legs were unsteady. I crossed to the windows and stared at the vista. Chicago looked the same. “Why are we not at Navy Pier? How did we get here?”

  “Navy Pier? I don’t understand.”

  I turned away from the windows. “That’s where you gave me the injection.”

  Eve shook her head. “No, we’ve been in my office the whole time.”

  “I’ve never been to your office before.”

  “Actually, you’ve been here half a dozen times. We’ve been working through your grief over Karly. But today was the first time we tried my new therapy.”

  I sat down again and tried to puzzle out what was happening to me. By saying the escape word, I should have gone back to my world. The real world. And yet my surroundings all felt brand new.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Today? About five hours. That’s quite a bit longer than most of my patients experience in their sessions. I was starting to get concerned. If it went on much longer, I was debating how to bring you back. But I assume you finally said the escape word.”

  “I did,” I said, after a moment of silence.

  She sensed my hesitation. “Dylan, it may feel strange, but you really are back where you belong.”

  Was I?

  Then why did everything feel different?

  “I don’t remember any of this,” I told her. “Your office. The sessions we’ve had. I don’t remember the past few weeks at all, other than being in the Many Worlds.”

  “That’s not surprising. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect of the treatment.”

  “Because of the psychotropic drugs?” I asked.

  “Psychotropics?” she replied with surprise. “Where did you get that idea? All I gave you was a simple muscle relaxant to put you in a receptive frame of mind. The rest is hypnotic suggestion, and then . . . well, it’s up to your brain to take it from there. However, the intensity of the experience can leave patients extremely disoriented. Your memory typically comes back after a while. It may take a few hours, or even up to a few days. Given how long you were under, I’m not entirely sure what you can expect.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember my recent past, but the only experiences that were vivid were what I’d been through in the other worlds. I could still remember the violence and death I’d seen there. I could feel it. My hands were raw where I’d squeezed them around Dylan’s neck. I could taste Karly on my lips.

  “This hypnotic suggestion you gave me,” I said. “How did that work?”

  “Before we began, you picked a place that you wanted to use as your ‘portal.’ The place where the various versions of yourself would intersect.”

  “And that was . . . ?”

  “The Art Institute,” Eve replied with another curious smile, as if she knew I was testing her. “So that’s where I told you to go.”

  I got off the sofa again, feeling restless. Everything she said made sense, but I was having trouble leaving the experiences of my hypnosis behind. “This will sound like a strange question, but are the police looking for me?”

  Surprise creased her face. “The police? For what?”

  “Murder. Four women were stabbed to death. They’d all attended events at my hotel.”

  “Murder? God, no, there’s nothing like that. I’m so sorry, you must have gone through horrific things while you were under. That’s very unusual. Most patients don’t have experiences that are nearly so . . . violent. In fact, most of them never make it out of their portal. But I take it you did.”

  “Yes.”

  “You actually went to other worlds?”

  “I went to several worlds, but the first time—”

  “Yes?”

  “The first time felt like it was the real world. That’s how I remember it. I don’t recall getting there through the Art Institute. You even had me say the safe word for you in that world, and nothing changed. I didn’t come back here. I don’t understand how that could be.”

  “The safe word only works if you’re aware of what’s happening to you,” Eve replied. “Your brain may not have been ready to process the experience yet.”

  I thought about that world and everything I’d experienced. The insanity. The violence. The doppelgänger breaking into my life. Of course, none of it was real. Of course, I was already deep inside Eve’s therapy.

  So why did being here feel wrong?

  “I’m distressed if this was traumatic for you,” Eve went on. “That was definitely never the point of the therapy.”

  She sensed my disorientation and tried to reassure me with a smile.

  “Look, we obviously need to talk about everything you experienced,” she went on, “but it’s better if we don’t do that right now. You need time to process. We can set up another appointment in a few days, and you can fill me in on what you went through. In the meantime, hopefully your short-term memory will begin to come back, too.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “It might be better if you don’t drive yourself home.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m starting to feel better. But I do have some questions. With my memory gone, I need to know—well, I need to know more about who I am. I’m a little lost about what’s real and what’s not.”

  “Certainly. Ask anything you want.”

  I paced back and forth in her office, trying to gather my thoughts. Eve’s desk was on the opposite wall, and I ran my hand along the oak surface. She had a copy of her book there: Many Worlds, Ma
ny Minds. It matched the book I’d purchased in the hotel ballroom, at a time when I still thought I was in the real world. When I picked it up and turned it over, I saw the same photograph of Eve that I’d seen in the poster for her event.

  “Dylan?” Eve asked. “Are you okay?”

  I put the book back down on her desk. “I guess so. You called me Dylan. That’s my name, right? Dylan Moran.”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Where do I work?”

  “You tell me,” she replied. “It’s easier to get your memory back if you let your brain help you. Where do you think you work?”

  “I’m the events manager for the LaSalle Plaza Hotel.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I live in an apartment across from River Park. My grandfather, Edgar, lives upstairs.”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about everything else that had changed in the other worlds. “Have I mentioned a woman named Tai Ragasa during our sessions?”

  “The coworker with a crush on you? Yes.”

  “But that’s all she is to me? A coworker? We’re not involved?”

  “No.”

  “My best friend, Roscoe Tate. He’s—he’s not alive.”

  “No. You lost Roscoe in a car accident several years ago. It was a devastating event for you. He was the one stable influence in your life after the deaths of your parents.”

  “That was also the night . . . ,” I began, but I couldn’t go on.

  Eve waited, but when she saw me hesitate, she filled in the blanks. “That was also the night you met Karly.”

  “Eve, why did I come to you?”

  “You know the answer to that question, Dylan. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Karly,” I said. “I lost her in the flood.”

  “See? You do remember.”

  “But I don’t remember coming to you. I don’t remember any of this.”

  Eve shrugged. “Three weeks ago, I had an event at your hotel. I gave a lecture about my Many Worlds, Many Minds theory. Afterward, you came up to me. This was only a few days after the accident. You were still devastated, still in deep grief. You said you normally didn’t have much time for shrinks, but everyone had been telling you to get help. My theory intrigued you. You said that ever since the accident, you’d been obsessed with your bad choices. You thought Karly had died because of the man you were and the mistakes you’d made in life. You wondered whether there was a Dylan out there who’d made better choices, and you wanted to know what that world might look like. That’s how it began.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.”

  “But you still don’t remember any of it.”

  “No.”

  Eve stood up from the chair. “Don’t worry too much about that. I told you, it will take time. For now, it’s better if you go home and rest.”

  I crossed the room and shook her hand. “I guess I should thank you.”

  “You should only thank me if you experienced some kind of epiphany. The whole point of my Many Worlds therapy is to help you understand the world you’re in by seeing the alternatives. Did you learn anything about yourself?”

  “I think so.”

  “What?”

  “There was a part of me I had to kill. So that’s what I did.”

  She frowned. “Literally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. That’s extreme. I’ve never heard that before. Do you feel like a different person as a result of it?”

  “Actually, I do. I just wish I’d figured it out a long time ago. I’ve lost the things that matter most to me, and now it’s too late to change my life.”

  She gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s not too late. As long as you’re breathing, there’s still time. I’ll see you again soon, Dylan. Things will start feeling better, you’ll see.”

  “I hope so.”

  I headed for the door, but as I reached to open it, I stopped. I glanced around at the office again, which was completely unfamiliar. Even so, I told myself that everything here was solid. Normal. Real. So was Eve Brier.

  And yet.

  “Dylan? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. Something still feels off to me. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “It’s the aftereffects of the therapy. That will pass. Trust me, Dylan, you’re back now.”

  I had no reason to disbelieve anything she’d told me, but I’m sure my face broadcast my doubts.

  “You still don’t think this is your own world, do you?” Eve asked.

  “I’m not sure. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want this to be the real world.”

  “Why is that?”

  I hesitated, trying to understand it myself. I could still feel those last moments in River Park as I lay dying. “Something happened to me right before I came back.”

  “When you had to kill your other self?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try not to think of the violence as real, because it wasn’t. You were right here in my office the whole time.”

  “Yes, I know, that’s what you said. But it’s more complicated than that. I saw Karly in that world. She was there, too.”

  Eve frowned. “Ah. That must have been very emotional.”

  “It was.”

  “Sometimes an experience like that is part of letting go,” she told me. “It’s how you deal with grief.”

  “Maybe so, but I can’t stop thinking about what she said to me.”

  “What did she say?”

  I could hear Karly’s voice, as clearly as if she were standing over me again. Looking down at me and whispering her last words. It didn’t feel like goodbye. It didn’t feel like what she would say if we were about to be parted forever.

  It felt like a message.

  Something to carry with me wherever I was going.

  “She told me to come find her. She said she was still here.”

  CHAPTER 34

  I left Eve’s office and passed the Lucent sculpture in the lobby of Hancock Center. Its thousands of lights, reflected in the black pool of water, taunted me like an echo of what I’d been through. Each flickering light was another world, another life, among an endless number constantly multiplying in my mind. I’d visited some of those places, and now I was back in my own world.

  Except, according to Eve, I’d never actually left. All this time, I’d been lying on her sofa on the twenty-ninth floor.

  As I got back to Michigan Avenue, nothing felt out of place around me. The city looked and smelled the same. The water tower was where it was supposed to be. The shops, people, and traffic hadn’t changed. When I checked my wallet, I found a parking ticket for a garage on Chestnut. It was dated early that morning, just as Eve had told me. The key fob in my pocket led me to a used Ford in the garage, and the documents in the glove compartment told me I’d purchased the car three weeks ago. That would have been shortly after the accident.

  Everything fit. So why could I remember nothing between then and now?

  Why did I feel like I didn’t belong here?

  I drove from the garage into the city. Eve had told me to go home and rest, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I was still struggling to decide if I could trust what my senses were telling me. I kept looking for a flaw, a clue, a telltale sign that this world was an illusion like the others. At every stoplight, I checked faces in the cars and crosswalks, hunting for another Dylan Moran. If I saw one of my doubles, then I would know that my brain was lying. But the only Dylan in this world seemed to be me.

  My first stop was near Horner Park where Roscoe had died. I needed to see the scars on the ash tree at the corner. They were still there, marking the collision that had killed my friend. Nothing was different. When I was done there, I walked two blocks and found the home listed for sale by Chance Properties. Scotty Ryan’s truck was outside. He was doing renovations; he was still alive. I had no memory of whether I’d gotten into a fig
ht with him over his affair with Karly, but it was obvious that no version of myself had come to the house and stabbed him to death.

  What I remembered of the past few weeks wasn’t real.

  What I didn’t remember was real. I still found that hard to accept.

  My next stop was at Alicia Tate’s clinic. I needed to see someone I’d known for years, someone who would never lie to me. The last time I’d been in this clinic, which felt like only hours ago, I’d seen Roscoe, alive. I still expected him to come through the door, even though I knew that was impossible.

  Alicia hugged me when she saw me. She looked normal; she looked the same. When she took me back to her office, she asked me how I was, and I told her very honestly that I didn’t know.

  “Alicia, this is an odd question, but when did you last see me?”

  She gave me a quizzical stare. “What?”

  “I’m having some short-term memory issues. When did we last talk?”

  “You came in for an appointment a few days after Karly’s funeral.”

  “Was anything wrong with me?”

  “Only the things I’d expect. Depression, anxiety, sleeplessness. Your blood sugar was elevated, which can happen as a result of stress, and so was your heart rate. You were grieving, and that takes a physical toll as well as an emotional and psychological one. Now, tell me about these memory issues.”

  “I will, but first things first. When I saw you, did I say anything about . . . seeing things?”

  “Seeing things? Like what?”

  “Like my identical twin. A doppelgänger. Someone who looked exactly like me.”

  Her brow wrinkled in surprise. “No, you didn’t say anything like that. Why, are you having hallucinations?”

  I ignored her question. “Did I mention a psychiatrist named Eve Brier?”

  Alicia frowned. “Yes. You told me you’d heard her speak at the hotel, and you’d read her book. You were planning to see her for therapy. I told you I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. Not therapy itself—I strongly suggested you talk to someone. But I looked up this Dr. Brier, and based on what I found, I had concerns about the kind of treatment she offered. Something tells me you went to see her anyway.”

  “I think I did.”