by Ted Sanders
“Another universe,” April said, as if a question that had been nagging her had suddenly been answered. She glanced around the room as though that other universe might be visible, ghosted over the top of this one.
“A parallel world,” Falo said.
Horace, suddenly, was way ahead of them. “The multiverse,” he said hoarsely.
April cocked her head at him. “What’s that?”
“It’s a theory,” he said, letting his mind slip into gear. “I don’t totally understand it. But basically it says we’re inside an endless multiverse, made up of an infinite number of parallel universes. We’re only aware of a single one of those universes—the one we live in. But whenever we see something happen a certain way in our universe, another universe is created where it happens another way.”
“Yes,” Falo said. “Reality splits, and two new realities are created. But not just two—a new universe is created for every possible outcome of every witnessed event. There is now another universe where the coin rolled under the bed. Another where the coin was a quarter rather than a nickel. Even a universe where the coin landed on edge.”
“Is that even possible?” Horace’s mother asked. “Landing on edge?”
“Once every six thousand tosses or so,” Horace mumbled, dredging up a fact he’d read once that he wasn’t entirely sure he believed.
Arthur hopped to the ground. As if he understood, and wanted to try it for himself, he began fussing at the nickel with his sturdy beak.
“Okay,” Horace said. “I understand the theory—sort of—but if the universe is constantly splitting into new universes, why are we here and not there?”
“We are there,” April replied, surprising him.
“Yes,” said Falo. “In fact, Horace, there would be a universe where you are asking that same exact question, but your shirt is red instead of blue.”
Horace shook his head in wonder. It was one thing to imagine the idea of the multiverse, a theory that not even all scientists embraced. It was quite another to learn he was actually living in it. “And I guess red-shirt Horace thinks he’s the real Horace,” he said.
Falo nodded. “Every reality believes itself to be the true reality. And why shouldn’t it? The very phenomenon of consciousness itself is created along that messy rift where realities split apart. The act of witnessing is the act of being.”
Horace must have look puzzled, because his mother explained softly, “What we experience is what we are.”
“Yes, precisely,” said Falo. “Thank you, Jess. We are what we experience. And when our experiences diverge, so do our consciousnesses. New worlds are thus created. New selves. But one consciousness—one self—is not more real, or more valid, or more true, than any other.”
April seemed to be taking all of this in stride. If anything, she seemed deeply satisfied. She watched Arthur silently, kicking her booted feet as they dangled from the huge bed. Horace became suddenly sure, though he could not have said how, that she was imagining a universe in which her parents were still alive. That she was picturing another April, as real as the one sitting here now, with her parents in a happier place, far away from all of this.
No one spoke for a little while. Horace swam through a stew of logic and emotion. Concepts he could barely grasp, wispy feelings he couldn’t begin to name. He felt . . . small. An infinite number of Horaces, in an infinite number of universes. And not just Horaces. There would be a universe where Chloe and the others made it back to Ka’hoka safely.
There would be a universe where they didn’t.
He shoved the thought from his mind, trying to keep his thoughts away from Chloe. Many Horaces. Many universes. Not just a theory, but reality.
“Although we cannot witness the multiverse firsthand,” Falo said, “its existence is vital to what we do. The falkrete stones, the Nevren, the dumindar—all of these operate by exploiting certain links between universes. Indeed, some of our most powerful Tan’ji can only function by accessing the multiverse. Take the Alvalaithen, for instance. When Chloe uses the dragonfly, she is shifting partway into other universes. Universes where an obstacle like a wall—or a tree or a body or a mountain—simply does not exist. She still has to navigate between the atoms of the object here in our own universe, but the trip is greatly simplified.”
“Everywhere here,” April whispered. “That’s brilliant.”
“I vote we don’t tell Chloe that’s what she’s doing,” Horace’s mother said.
“Seconded,” said Horace. He’d long ago accepted that Chloe vehemently did not want to know how the dragonfly worked. She was convinced her mastery of her Tan’ji depended on instinct, and that too much knowledge would spoil it.
Falo waved a pale hand. “I’m simplifying the matter a bit. I’m not ashamed to say that the details of the Alvalaithen are beyond me, and the truths I do know are not really mine to tell. I am not its Maker.” Her eyes lit on Horace, as if incidentally. Her gaze was like an open door.
Horace hesitated, then pulled the Box of Promises from its pouch at his side. “But you are the Maker of the Fel’Daera.”
“I am,” Falo said solemnly, her voice thrumming.
“And the multiverse has something to do with how it works, doesn’t it?” asked Horace.
Horace couldn’t have said how, but the mood in the room suddenly thickened. Goose bumps blossomed along his arms. April pressed her fist against her mouth. His mother shifted nervously and threw a worried look at Falo. Falo seemed not to notice, leaning in, her eyes locked on Horace’s. Pressing her thin lips tight, she drew faint breaths through her nose over the Fel’Daera, as if she savoring the smell of it. She didn’t look at it.
“What are you asking me, Keeper?” she said low. “What is it you think you wish to know?”
A curl of sickness rolled through Horace’s gut. After he had first come through the Find, when the Fel’Daera was still new and overwhelming, Mr. Meister had offered many reassurances about Horace’s newfound power: “You do not control the future; you do not create it; you are not responsible for whatever the future might bring.”
But the old man was a deceiver. Had he deceived Horace about the Fel’Daera?
“There are many universes,” Horace said, pressing forward cautiously. “Each universe has a different future. Each one takes a different path.”
“Each path is a different universe,” Falo clarified. “Each time there is a splitting, a new universe is created.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Consider a bare tree,” she said, and then something incredible happened.
A tree made of golden light grew from her hand. It rose and spread, its bare branches forking and bending. It grew two feet high, wondrously complicated and real, but shimmering like the sun on water. Its roots wrapped around Falo’s hand as if gripping her tight.
April clapped softly. Beside Falo, Horace’s mom sat watching with obvious delight. This was the Medium, of course, and his mom could feel it in a way that Horace never would. It was only the second time he had even seen the Medium; apparently making it visible was a trick only Makers like Falo and Brian could manage. But where was Falo’s Tan’ji, the Starlit Loom? How was she doing this?
“Forgive me the fireworks,” Falo said. “I am only trying to illustrate a point. Imagine that the trunk of the tree is the present. As we move into the future, up the tree, each branching represents a splitting, the creation of a new universe. These splittings happen because events have happened in slightly different ways.”
“Heads instead of tails,” Horace said.
“Yes. Note, though, that these future universes used to be a single universe. They all share the same history, up until the split.” The trunk pulsed and glowed. “Every time a split occurs, a new path is created. A new universe. And so the tip of each twig on this tree is a different possible future, a future that we here in the present might eventually end up in.” Swiftly, a wave of twinkling lights swept over the crown of the tree, thousands of sparkles illuminating the
tips of every twig. “Each twig, in fact, is effectively a different universe, even though they all began in this one.”
“So it’s kind of like the tree of life,” Horace said. “Like whales, for example. Even though we see a bunch of different species of whale now, we know that long ago they shared a common ancestor.”
“Precisely,” Falo said. A single path grew bright inside the tree, rising from the trunk and following the bends of a particular series of branches out to the very end of a single twig. The path burned for a moment, and then went out. Now another path lit up, following a different series of branches and ending in a completely different place. “Like species, some universes are very different, because the path they used to share split a long time ago,” Falo said. “But others are quite similar, because the split happened only recently.” The very end of the current path shifted slightly, somewhere along the last few bends, so that it remained mostly the same but ended on a different twig a short distance away.
Horace reached out for the tree. He thought Falo might stop him, but she didn’t. He stuck his finger into the trunk of the tree, right beneath the first branching. The Medium swirled and danced around his fingertip. He was surprised to feel nothing.
“So I’m here in the trunk,” he said, “and I open the Fel’Daera. The box then shows me one possible future, one possible path—”
“One potential universe, yes,” said Falo, a new path lighting up from trunk to twig as she spoke. “An extension of the universe we occupy in the present—a particular future universe where only certain things have come to pass.”
Horace was getting it. It definitely helped to think of it as tree. A single branch splits to become two, with each branch having no knowledge of the other except for the past they once shared. And the branching went on and on and on . . . forever. A Horace on every branch. A Fel’Daera on every branch. As his brain clutched at the notion, he began to feel tinier than he had ever felt before. Tinier, and more full of wonder.
But there was a problem.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “I get that the box shows me a particular path into a particular future, like the paths you’re making now. But you’re just choosing a path at random, for show. In real life, who decides which path the box shows me?”
“Not you,” his mother said suddenly, sharply. Her voice had the tone of a bear protecting her cubs.
Falo dropped her hand. The tree swirled with a flourish and vanished into sparkling dust. “That is correct,” she said. “The only decision you make, Horace, is whether to open the Fel’Daera in the first place, and what your state of mind is when you do open it. Consider this, as an example: the Horace that opens the Fel’Daera in fear is already in a different universe than the Horace who opens it in anger. They are already on different branches. Therefore the futures the Fel’Daera reveal to them will also be different.”
Horace digested the thought for a few moments and decided that this, after all, wasn’t so different from what Mr. Meister had told him after the Find. Opening the box was the first step toward the future the box then showed him. And yet . . . there was something new here. Something troubling that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. That tree. All those branches, most of them dark.
At last he said, “But what about all those other universes the box doesn’t show me? All those other paths, where other things might have happened?”
Even as he asked, Horace wished he could take the question back. His mom—his own mother—hung her head as if she could not bear to look, or even listen.
But not Falo. She let her deep eyes drop onto the Fel’Daera, just for an instant. Then she looked back at Horace and said clearly, “The other paths are extinguished.”
“Extinguished,” Horace repeated. The word didn’t even start to make sense to him until he said it out loud. He tried to breathe. “You mean destroyed?”
Falo tilted her head as if reluctant to agree. “Erased,” she said. “Absorbed. They expire to make fuel for the one future you then witness.”
“Fuel,” he said dumbly. The box was a sinking anchor in his hand. Hot ice.
April cleared her throat. “I wonder if you could show us, Falo,” she said. “I’m not sure I totally understand.”
Falo held out her hand again, and the glowing golden tree grew anew. “When the Keeper of the Fel’Daera looks through the blue glass, the Fel’Daera devotes itself completely to a single path. One particular future.” Right on cue, a fresh glowing path appeared within the crown of the tree, leading jaggedly all the way from trunk to twig. “Every branch and stick that does not lie along that path is absorbed. As these other paths disappear, the desired path becomes thicker. Stronger.”
Her words came to life as she spoke. The darker outer branches on the tree began to crumple and fade. They receded like melting snow, like rotting flesh. As they did, the chosen path Falo had illuminated grew stronger and brighter. The other branches continued to shrivel out of existence, seeming to feed the thickening central path. At last nothing was left but a bare crooked stick, with no branchings whatsoever. It looked like a wound. It looked powerful, and cruel.
“This is what the Fel’Daera does,” said Falo. “It consumes the many unchosen paths to strengthen the single path that remains.”
“The willed path,” said Horace thickly, staring in horror. “But why do those other paths need to be destroyed?”
Falo made a fist. The jagged, branchless tree evaporated in a cloud of drifting sparks. “Not destroyed. Extinguished. Swallowed. The proper word is—”
“But those paths,” Horace interrupted. “Those universes. They never really existed in the first place, right? They aren’t real.”
“What does it mean to be real?” Falo said, her voice infuriatingly calm. “Is the future real? Is a forgotten memory real?”
“You know what I’m asking you,” Horace said. “I’m asking you if there are things that would exist—could exist, should exist—if not for the Fel’Daera. Universes that would exist if not for me.”
“Yes,” his mother said abruptly, practically spitting out the word. Then she softened, and said it again. “Yes, Horace. They would.”
“Your mother is correct,” Falo said. “The unchosen paths do exist, in a manner of speaking. But the moment you crack open the Fel’Daera, those possibilities . . . give way.”
“But why?” Horace pleaded. “Why did you make it do that?”
Falo sighed. “Without that fuel, the visions of the Fel’Daera would be no better than a guess. A roll of the dice.” She nodded at the floor, where the nickel still lay. “The flip of a coin. Without the energy provided by this sacrifice, the Fel’Daera could not see tru—”
“Stop,” Horace said. “Just stop.” Sacrifice. Horace glared at Falo, at her magnificent, horrible hands. The branchless tree burned in his vision, and a thousand furious demands rumbled like bees in his head: a destroyer of universes . . . how could you make this thing? . . . who do you think you are? . . . what gives you the right? But none of them made it to his tongue. Instead his thoughts tumbled, tussling and buzzing. He looked down at the Fel’Daera, at the elegant, shimmering wings of its lid. He very nearly opened it, thought he might vomit if he did. He tried not to think of the hundreds of times he’d opened the box before now. Countless futures, erased.
He felt himself splitting in two again. To question the existence of the Fel’Daera was to question the existence of himself. The box belonged to him, and he belonged to it. All those universes, snuffed out . . . but then again—were they really real? Did they even truly exist yet?
And then again:
Did he care?
If the box was monstrous, was he willing to be a monster?
Chapter Five
Tangled Universes
HORACE TURNED MISERABLY TO CHLOE—BUT NO. CHLOE wasn’t here. She was out doing terrible things, dangerous things, straddling universes. Here was only April, a perfectly decent friend gazing at him now with her perfectly sensibl
e face, a perfectly reasonable furrow in her brow. She wasn’t going to spew any venom on his behalf, wasn’t going to smack him loose from his dismay, wasn’t going to bristle so fiercely that there was no room for anything else.
But then April said, looking him straight in the eye, “You look mad. Do you think there’s a universe where you’re destroying the Fel’Daera right now?”
It was nothing Chloe would have said. But it was every bit of cold water Chloe could have mustered, and then some. He actually gasped. He pressed the box to his chest.
“I’m not mad,” Horace lied. He searched inside himself for a better word. “I’m ashamed.” Still he clutched the Fel’Daera. Shame, yes, but also a nasty trickle of something else. He recognized it the same way he recognized that he would never—could never—destroy the Fel’Daera. That this little box, his Tan’ji, should have the immense power to erase entire universes . . . with it came a sliver of something that had to be called pride.
His shame grew deeper still.
“The Fel’Daera’s best Keepers have always felt shame,” Falo said. Her face was calm as ever, full of open light. Horace got the sense that she knew precisely what he was feeling. And maybe she did, through the bond of lavro’dorval between Maker and instrument. He resented her for it, just a little.
“Don’t you feel ashamed too?” Horace accused. “You’re the Maker.”
“When I first realized how I could create a Tan’ji that saw the future truly, I had shame. Deep shame, and sorrow. But I also had great need.”
“What need?” asked Horace.
“There were specific dangers that have since passed—”
“What dangers?” Horace interjected. Falo ignored him.
