“No, I just—well, maybe,” I said, feeling unnecessarily flustered. “I don’t know. I hate him, but he’s also my bio dad. And also, well, I hate him.”
“Yeah, I know how that one goes.” Neel looked down at his feet. “It’s hard to figure out how I feel about my mom too. Obviously.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond, because just then Sadie pushed open the steel double doors to the atom-smasher laboratory.
“Whoa!” I glanced at Neel, who just shrugged and moved away.
But Bunty the tiger heard my words. “Impressive, is it not? I felt the same way when I first got here.”
I felt torn, like I should go after Neel and make up with him, but I also didn’t want to make a scene in front of the others. So I just ignored the grumpy prince and looked around the room some more. Impressive was an understatement. The room was dark and cool, with ceilings so high I wasn’t even sure how far up they were. There were pipes and tubes—blue, silver, red—running in twisting patterns over the wall, all toward a big mechanical eye at the far end of the room.
“That’s the atom smasher.” Sadie pointed at the eye thing. “Where my colleagues and I try to re-create the conditions of the big bang. Conveniently, it can also double as an interdimensional wormhole maker.”
The atom smasher had a bright blue sphere at the center of a bunch of complicated gears and clock innards that moved constantly around it. Interlocking, shifting, opening, refitting together, the movement of the gears was absolutely mesmerizing. And just to the side of the giant eye-clock thing was a very welcome old friend.
“Raat!” I cried, running over to the winged horse and putting my arms around his neck. He was Neel’s horse but had served me well on my last adventure, when I was shutting down Sesha’s evil game show, Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?
Princess! the midnight-black horse said into my mind. I brought my boy to you across the dimensions.
“Yes, I know you did, my wonderful friend,” I murmured, sneaking a look over at Neel. The prince was standing alone, looking into space, chewing on a nail. I felt a confusing flood of emotions rush through me at how sad Neel was looking. My face felt so hot, I pressed my nose into Raat’s velvety temple. His wings expanded and contracted in pleasure.
And then I heard the familiar, accented voice right above our heads. “Ev-ry-sing is connected to ev-ry-sing.”
“But how?” I responded. Raat whinnied, looking up too. We were staring into the face of the scientist I’d met on my first trip to the Kingdom Beyond. He was floating in midair, legs folded, like he was meditating. Just like he’d been the first time I’d seen him.
“Smartie-ji!” chirped Tuni, flying up to give the floating scientist an affectionate peck on the cheek. “How’s it hangin’?”
That’s right, it was Albert Einstein, one of the world’s most famous scientists, hanging out in this atom-smashing lab in Parsippany, New Jersey. Never mind he was defying gravity. Also never mind he was actually dead.
“How are you, Einstein-ji?” I said respectfully, putting my hands together in a namaskar. “Can I introduce you …”
“No need, no need!” said Albert Einstein in his distinctive accent. “I’ve spent a most pleasant day being taught ze rules of foosball by your tiger and bird friends here. And of course I know ze Princes Lalkamal and Neelkamal.”
Lal waved happily at the scientist, but Neel just gave a little head nod.
The scientist went on, “Ze good pakkhiraj horse and I just had to take a small break from the fray when, ahem, some people started to get rather competitive with ze table tennis!”
Competition stresses me out, Raat admitted into my mind.
Shady Sadie and K. P. Das looked guiltily at the floor, but they didn’t say anything. Everyone seemed a little bit in awe of the famous scientist. Maybe it was the fact that he’d discovered important scientific formulas like E = mc2 or maybe it was just that he was the only one among us who wasn’t supposed to be alive.
The other strange thing about Einstein-ji (well, other than him just being there) was how he was dressed. The last time we’d seen him, he’d been wearing a turban, kurta, and pajamas. Now he was in gray robes and a floppy gray wizard’s hat, and carrying a wand that he kept twirling and tossing in the air like some kind of overage marching band baton twirler. His outfit reminded me too much of a certain wizarding headmaster from another famous story, but I decided to keep quiet about the scientist’s fashion choices.
“How are the star babies, Smartie-ji?” Neel asked. He was referring to the fact that the last time we’d seen him, Einstein-ji was teaching star nursery school in an outer space nebula known in the other dimension as Maya Pahar. “I didn’t ask you before, but did you retire from teaching?”
“Oh, I’m just here temporarily, so I got a substitute!” Albert Einstein flipped, so his folded legs were up and his head was down. Despite this feat of gravity, his wizard’s hat stayed on his head. “Dr. Hawking is very popular with ze star babies! He is most excellent at remembering ze nursery rhymes and playing ring around ze rosie.”
“Dr. Hawking?” I asked. “Like Dr. Stephen Hawking?”
“Ze one and ze same!” said Einstein-ji, pointing at me with his wand.
Okay. Why not. Stephen Hawking, the world-famous scientist who had recently passed away (at least in this dimension!), was now teaching star babies in an outer space star nursery in Maya Pahar.
I squinted at the floating scientist-slash-wizard. “No offense, Your Smartness, but how are you here? I know you can exist in Maya Pahar because of, um, something to do with the fabric of space-time …” My voice trailed off.
“Oh, pfft! Death! Just transfer of matter from one plane of existence to another, you know!” Einstein flipped back around in midair.
“He shouldn’t be able to be here, actually, and certainly not in that outfit,” said Shady Sadie as she typed something into a computer keyboard. “But because of the work of the Anti-Chaos Committee, many interdimensional and intercultural stories are slipping into one another. The boundaries between stories, but also dimensions, seems to be weakening. It’s probably how all of you ended up in this slightly wrong version of New Jersey.”
“You know about that?” I breathed. “My parents, and Jovi and Zuzu …”
Neel shot me a confused look. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged back at him. He might be mad at me for thinking his mom was a villain, but I still had totally good reasons to be mad at him too. I’d been all alone, dealing with this bizarre version of New Jersey, while he was—what? Planning how to have a fuzzy and warm new relationship with his monstrous mama?
“Science and stories are not so different, my young friends,” said K. P. Babu. “They both ask the big questions of life and both seek answers to make sense of the mysterious world around us.”
“But now Sesha and his Anti-Chaos Committee are trying to simplify those answers!” Einstein-ji added. His accent made it so that he pronounced “chaos” like “kah-os.”
“But I thought you and Dr. Hawking didn’t believe the universe needed chaos, Professor Einstein!” I said, remembering back to what Ned-slash-Nidhoggr had been arguing about the need for a universal theory, one singular story. “I thought you were both looking for a theory of everything!”
“Yes, that is true,” Einstein-ji agreed, giving his wand a toss before impressively catching it with one foot. “But we never found such a theory, did we? It was in the very search that our knowledge grew.”
“What do you mean?” I looked from one scientist to the next, and then back to my friends. The animals, Lal, and Neel all just shrugged.
“Let us go back to ze beginning, Prinzess,” said Einstein-ji, waving his hand vaguely at Sadie. She typed some more stuff into the keyboard, pulling up an image of a black funnel-type thing—kind of like the drawing of the Victrola in the three-doored room. “Do you know what a singularity is?”
I wrinkled my brow. “No?”
Bunty cleared their throa
t. “Do you mean, the idea of a superhuman artificial intelligence that will outstrip human intellect?”
“Show-off,” muttered Tuntuni, and Neel gave the bird a glare.
“No, tiger-ji, not that sort of singularity,” said K. P. Babu patiently. “Dr. Einstein means in the context of space science.”
“Well, then, no, I don’t know,” admitted Bunty with an embarrassed cough.
Everybody else, for their parts, looked just as clueless as I felt.
“A singularity is a one-dimensional point from where the entire multiverse was born. Think about a huge amount of mass being mashed into an infinitely small space.” K. P. Babu took a piece of paper and crumpled it tightly in his hand, holding out the small ball he had made when done.
“Kind of like what almost happened to us at the bottom of that squishifying rabbit hole,” muttered Tuni. I shuddered at the memory.
Einstein-ji twirled his wand in one hand as he continued, “A singularity is something scientists haven’t been able to see, but think exists in ze middle of black holes—what you know as rakkhosh in the Kingdom Beyond. It’s ze point from where ze big bang happened.”
“So, something inside a rakkhosh is why the entire multiverse was started? Sir, can you possibly be saying that rakkhosh are responsible for the birth of everything we know?” Lal gave his brother an amazed look, which Neel returned with a raise of one eyebrow.
“You all got a problem with that too?” snapped Neel.
Lal looked incredulous, but I remembered back to when Neel’s mom had once opened her mouth and I’d been sure I’d seen planets, stars, moons—entire galaxies—in there.
“It’s a theory, of course, but with good evidence to support it,” said Shady Sadie. “We think of a black hole as only destructive, something that gobbles up energy and life, but that’s a simplistic idea, just a singular story about rakkhosh.”
Neel gave me a pointed look. I scowled. It was not simplistic to think that his mother was mostly evil and destructive. No matter what these scientists said.
“Despite my efforts to find the beautiful simplicity of the multiverse,” Einstein-ji went on, “ze truth is, there is also beauty in its complexity and ambiguity. As much as we work to understand it, there are parts of the truth that always slip through our fingers, lie always beyond our understanding.” He flipped this way and that in the air as he spoke, now up, now down, dancing to an invisible cosmic music in the flickering light of the lab’s giant atom smasher.
“And this is what the Anti-Chaos Committee is trying to destroy?” I asked.
“The multiverse may have started from a singularity, but it started expanding outward and outward immediately after the big bang. It’s still expanding—think of all the different, diverse stories being born every day. Well, that is, unless …” K. P. Babu’s words drifted off.
“Unless someone puts a stop to it. Unless someone stops the chaos and kills the diversity of the multiverse,” Neel finished.
“And causes it to begin shrinking,” said Einstein-ji. “As there was once a big bang, there might indeed be a big crunch.”
“But what does all this have to do with the Serpent King and Rakkhoshi Rani getting married?” asked Lal.
“Love, exciting and new …” crooned Tuni. This time, Neel took a swat at him but missed when the bird flew up and out of the way.
“We fear Sesha’s efforts to destroy and demoralize Demon Land by rounding up rakkhosh, khokkosh, doito, and danav recently were just the tip of the iceberg. It is through the power of rakkhosh that the multiverse was born, and it is by destroying rakkhosh-kind that the multiverse can die. Or at least, collapse from its wondrous complexity into one reality, one single story,” K. P. Das said.
Sadie went on, “Sesha realized that killing or imprisoning rakkhosh from all the different clans one at a time was not enough of an energetic shift to begin the universe shrinking. To jump-start the big crunch, Sesha must control the Rakkhoshi Rani’s power, the power that stems from being the elected leader of all the rakkhosh from all the different clans.”
“I’m getting married in the mo-orning,” sang Tuni tunelessly.
“Zip it, Tuni,” I muttered, looking from one serious scientific face to the next.
“Mawage!” chirped Tuni. “That bwessed awangement! That dweam within a dweam!”
“Tuni!” I snapped, while almost at the same time, Bunty growled, “Desist, birdbrain!”
“So Sesha is marrying my mother because he’s trying to steal her power—the power of all rakkhosh-kind!” Neel gave me a triumphant look. “It’s what he tried to do before with those neutron stars. So she must be his prisoner. I was right—she’s not agreeing to this marriage voluntarily!”
“Perhaps,” said Einstein. “But perhaps she has an agenda of her own.”
I raised my eyebrows, giving Neel an “I told you so” look. “Yeah, like maybe she wants the Anti-Chaos Committee to use her power so she and Sesha can, like, rule the singular universe together or whatever.”
Neel gave me a murderous look.
I let out a frustrated breath, but before I could say anything, Einstein beckoned us both over to him. “Come here, my young friends,” he said gently.
As we approached him, he handed me a little book—a hardback volume bound in fading silver with vague images of rakkhosh, khokkosh, pakkhiraj horses, and even a tiger on the outside. I read the title carved into the spine.
“Thakurmar Jhuli.” I sounded the Bengali lettering out slowly—then looked up at the scientist. “This is the book of Kingdom Beyond stories my baba always read to me.” I flipped through the familiar pages, the illustrations of various stories about ghosts and demons, clever owls and silly monkeys, brave princes and princesses, all from the Kingdom Beyond.
“My mom used to read it to me too,” said Neel in a low voice. I shot him a surprised look. I’d never figured Pinki did ordinary mom things like tell Neel stories. “She was a great storyteller,” added Neel defensively. “She’d do all the voices and everything.”
Einstein-ji tapped his finger on the side of his nose mysteriously. “You asked me how I can be alive and also not alive. Here and also not here. It is because I, like these stories, operate outside of time.” He emphasized the last word kind of unnecessarily.
“What do you mean, Smartie-ji?” Neel asked.
“My children,” said the old scientist, “keep zis volume close to you, and if ever you have need to go backward into a story, back in time, even, just open the pages and dive right in.”
Neel and I exchanged troubled glances. “Back in time?” I repeated.
“Just so! Just so!” Einstein burbled, flipping again through the air. “Wormhole travel is not bad, but story travel is the best kind of travel of all! Beyond the reaches of linear space and time! Stories are the most powerful way to journey in the multiverse!”
Neel raised his eyebrow at me, like he wasn’t sure the old scientist was all there in the head anymore. I mouthed, “Cut it out,” before finally turning my face up toward Einstein-ji again.
“Um, okay, we’ll do that,” I said, tucking the book into my backpack. “Thanks, Professor Einstein.”
“Perhaps you might even go back in time to settle your little quarrel about why your parents are getting married,” said the scientist mysteriously.
“You should all get ready! The wormhole will be operational momentarily!” It was Sadie, who was punching something into her keyboard. I realized that while Neel and I had been talking to Einstein-ji, the atom smasher at the end of the room had started spinning the opposite way, gears and locks whirring around it.
“No one has told us, though, how we’re going to stop this wedding?” Neel asked. “Whether my mom’s Sesha’s prisoner”—he raised an eyebrow in my direction—“or something else, we can’t let the wedding continue, can we?”
“Oh no, absolutely not!” burbled K. P. Das. “The wedding must be stopped! The big crunch must be avoided at all costs!”
“We have been discussing it, and we think the first thing to do is enlist an army to infiltrate the wedding party and slow down the wedding festivities!” Shady Sadie was shouting to be heard over the whirling wormhole maker.
“No offense, Your Smartnesses, but you put the greatest scientific minds of the multiverse together and that’s what you came up with?” Tuni twittered. “An army of wedding crashers?”
“Just so,” agreed K. P. Babu. He was holding tight on to his dhoti to stop it from lifting off in the wind being generated by the spinning wormhole. Or pre-wormhole. Or whatever that thing was at the end of the room. “Already your friend Mati and the PSS are gathering their forces. You must help everyone get primped and dressed appropriately to blend into the crowd!”
“And if that doesn’t work,” shouted Shady Sadie, “use the butterflies!”
“What?” The wind was battering against my face so hard it felt like there was a storm brewing inside the room.
“Butterfly effect!” Einstein-ji was talking, but I could barely make out his words, everything was so loud now.
“The butterfly effect?” Neel echoed. He helped his brother onto Raat’s back and climbed on after. Raat stepped this way and that, trying to stay upright in the face of all the wind.
As Tuni jumped on my shoulder, Bunty crouched down in front of me. “Your carriage, my princess!” the tiger purred. I got gratefully on, holding tight to Bunty’s thick neck fur.
Then Bunty roared to the scientists, “Isn’t the butterfly effect the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Maya Pahar can cause a tornado in the Kingdom Beyond?”
At the end of the room, the wormhole was spinning faster now, shooting off light around the room.
“Something like that,” shouted Shady Sadie. “It’s the idea that no matter how accurate or advanced our science is at predicting weather, say, there’s always something beyond our understanding. That’s the beauty of the universe. That’s the butterfly effect.”
“No matter how sure you are, things change!” K. P. Das clapped his hands as Bunty reared back, getting ready to leap at the whirring wormhole. “A butterfly might move a wing across the world and change your entire reality.”
The Chaos Curse Page 14
