The Alternate Universe

by The Alternate Universe [MM] (epub)

  The idea was so ridiculous that Claude could only smile. “Great. Anyway, I’ve got homework to do.”

  “You don’t think it’s possible, do you?”

  “Uh, no.” Whether or not his dad’s theories were sound seemed far less relevant than real-world issues, like whether or not he’d feel awkward the next time he and Jayesh Hilovasian were face to face.

  His dad examined him with intense brown eyes. “What if I told you that there’s an infinite number of alternate universes, and they’re constantly branching off from each other? Every moment that passes is filled with different options, different routes, different possibilities. And each and every one of those possibilities is realized—or I should say, has a chance of being realized in another universe.”

  Claude smiled. “So in one universe you and Mom are still together.”

  His dad pursed his lips. “Highly probable, I’d think.”

  “And there’s a universe in which, say, siblings can get married?”

  “I’m not saying everything is. I’m just saying everything is possible. It’s possible that there exists a universe much like ours, with an America much like ours where, yes, siblings can get married. But everything in this theoretical realm exists as a probability, not a fact. Some scenarios are more likely than others. The more bizarre the scenario, the less likely it is.”

  “Give me some examples of what you mean by ‘likely’.”

  “Well, I think slight shifts are more likely than big ones. Slight shifts can have big impacts, of course. I always think of President Mondale’s death. If the wind that day hadn’t been so unpredictable, his helicopter wouldn’t have crashed.”

  “And Ferraro wouldn’t have become president.”

  “And we probably wouldn’t have gone to war with Brazil and countless other things that have affected millions of lives.”

  “So you’re saying it’s more likely there’s an alternative universe in which Ferraro didn’t become president than an alternative universe in which I do become president?”

  “Right. Because only one thing had to change for Ferraro to have remained a forgotten vice president while countless little factors would have to shift to send you to the White House.”

  “I see. And didn’t the decision to ban gunpowder-based weapons after World War I come down to one vote in the League of Nations?”

  “Exactly. It’s easy to imagine the vote having gone the other way, and instead of fighting with blades and arrows, the world’s armies would have gone on to invent endlessly new and horrible ways to kill each other. Or think of the OPEC crisis. If the Saudi States hadn’t been so greedy, we’d all be riding carts with combustible-engine motors instead of horses.”

  “Dad, that’s ridiculous!” Yet even as he pronounced the idea absurd, he wondered if there was a world in which the environment was still at least close to normal: where there were no flash tornados and Lake Michigan wasn’t a polluted mess.

  “Maybe ridiculous. Then again, maybe not. No one has proven the theory, but then no one has disproven it. This is a first step.” He pointed to the transporter.

  Claude looked at the device. If his father thought he could transfer gas magically from one dish to another—and that somehow that would eventually allow him to join Mom in Paris at a pivotal moment in their relationship—was he crazy? Or was he truly, as he’d heard people say, a genius?

  Claude thought of the doodles he’d just seen in his dad’s notebook. “What were those drawings in your notes?”

  His dad pulled the book from his shirt pocket. “Why?”

  Claude grabbed it and opened to the doodles. “I saw something just like this today.”

  His dad looked amused. “Really? I doubt that. I came up with these schematics this morning.”

  “Schematics for what?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “Because these,” Claude said, pointing to a series of concentric ovals, “look like the design on this.” He pulled the golden watch from his pocket.

  His dad squinted curiously at the object for a moment and then his face broke into a grin. “Where’d you get a pocket watch?” he asked, reaching for it.

  “Millstone gave it to me.”

  “Millstone?” he said, surprised.

  “He wants to be my friend. Open it. The pattern is inside.”

  His dad opened the watch and looked at the circular pattern etched on the inside of the cover. “Hmm,” he said, as he rubbed the engraving with his thumb. In a low voice, as if he were speaking to himself, he said, “This… this looks right.”

  “What looks right?” Claude asked.

  He looked a bit bewildered. “This pattern. It looks like a khronos.”

  “What’s that?”

  He shook his head as if it was hard to explain. “A schema, a concept. It’s what I’ve been trying to sketch.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s connected to that,” he said, pointing to the transport contraptions.

  “But what’s the schema mean?”

  “It connects things. Theory to practice. Maybe even one universe to another.”

  “Whoa. Seriously?”

  “That’s the theory anyway.”

  “The idea is pretty cosmic, but the pattern, I don’t think, is so special.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Carolien says her grandma’s ring has a similar design.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.” He tapped the phone in his pocket. “She just left a message about it.”

  “Can you ask her to bring it over?”

  “I guess. I think she’s made a moving picture about it.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll ask her to send a copy.”

  His dad continued to examine the watch, holding it at different angles. “Hades. This brings back memories,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “Your grandmother—my mother—used to have a watch like this.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “She lost it, I think. I remember Mom was terribly upset when she couldn’t find it because it had come from her Uncle Izzy.”

  “Was Izzy a jeweler?”

  “He was a scientist. Your Grandma adored him, but she was just nine when the family left Warsaw. Izzy stayed behind and the Nazis…” He drew his finger across his neck in a slicing motion.

  “Ouch.”

  “Your grandma talked about Izzy so much that I’d have nightmares. Most kids are worried about bogeymen in their closets, but I worried about Nazis. Every time my parents turned out the lights, I was sure there was one standing by the bed ready to grab me.”

  “The Nazis were long gone by the time you were born.”

  “My mother had a way of making them seem very, very real.”

  “That chews, but maybe that’s why you became a physicist—because Grandma was always talking about her beloved scientist uncle.”

  His dad shook his head. “Nah. I went back and forth about studying physics, or something else—electrical engineering, architecture. I remember the day I finally decided to stick with it, and it had nothing to do with Izzy.

  “You sure? You actually remember the moment you decided to study physics?”

  “I sure do.”

  “I don’t get it. You don’t remember to grocery shop. You don’t remember to pay the electric bill. You don’t remember to take pasta out of the pot until all the water boils away.”

  His dad grinned guiltily. “Some things are easier to remember than others. Hey, do you mind if I hold on to this for a bit?” He held up the watch.

  “Go ahead.”

  He slipped it in his shirt pocket, and plucked the notebook from Claude’s hand. “Since we’re playing show-and-tell, I’ve got something to show you.”

  “What?” He hoped it was dessert.

  “Follow me.” His dad stood, grabbed the crumpled bag of Chik ‘n’ Chak off the picnic table and walked into the house. After tossing
the bag on the dining room table, he knelt on the floor and began to rummage through the overstuffed gym bag that doubled as a briefcase. “Here we go,” he said, extracting a book, which he handed Claude. It was The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta by Albert Einstein. It was wrapped in a protective plastic sheath, as if it wasn’t supposed to be touched. “Open it.”

  Claude opened the flap and withdrew the book. The leather felt grainy, textured with decades of dust. The title was printed in gold leaf, and the spine was starting to flake. He opened the book carefully. It had been printed in 1938. Simon & Schuster. First Edition. He held the book under the light to see better. On the title page, in the broad bluish stroke of a fountain pen, was the signature:

  He felt a chill as he read the name.

  “Einstein really signed this?”

  “Looks like it. Pretty cosmic, huh?”

  “Sure. Where’d you get it.”

  “Someone sent it to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Probably Maya, although she acted like she knew nothing about it.” Maya was his colleague and close friend. “I think she got it for my birthday, which is coming up, in case you lost track.”

  “I was vaguely aware it was approaching,” Claude said, putting the book on the table. He picked up the crumpled Chik ‘n’ Chak bag and headed for the kitchen.

  “Hey, wait.”

  Claude turned around. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  His dad shrugged and then, with a gesture that seemed to take in the universe, said, “Everything. For being so busy. For making you live like this.”

  “Live like what?”

  “You know: Eating takeout. Spending so much time on your own.”

  “I like takeout. And I like being alone.”

  “It’s just that…” He paused, searching for the right words. “This isn’t the life I pictured for us. For the family. Ever since your mom left… I don’t know.”

  “I know you miss her. I miss her, too. I mean, I miss the way she used to be. I can’t stand her now.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ll say what I want. And you don’t need to apologize for anything,” he said, although it was true that he was sick of takeout and wished his dad spent more time around the house.

  “I’m in the middle of something and the ideas are coming so fast, it would be stupid to stop. But in a couple weeks, I’ll take a break. I’ll close my lab, give Maya the key, and then you’ll be seeing so much of me that you’ll be sick of me.”

  Despite how earnest his dad sounded, Claude didn’t believe him. He’d made similar promises before—to take him on a two-week camping trip for his 9th birthday, to help him build a tree house in the backyard three summers ago—but something always got in the way: an emergency at Fermi or a new discovery that needed to be written up immediately before another scientist could claim credit.

  “That’d be great,” Claude said, which was true. It would be great. Even though his dad was standing right in front of him, so close he could touch him, Claude felt as if they were miles apart. He yearned for more: for closeness, for his dad to really see him. He loved his dad and felt proud of him for getting down on his knees in the dirt to make a wacky invention, but he also felt hurt and disappointed; there’d been too many broken promises and his dad was too unreliable.

  His dad smiled, and Claude turned around and walked into the kitchen. He dumped the takeout bag in the trash and filled a glass with tap water and gulped it down. He filled and drained the glass several times, then placed the glass in the sink and washed his hands.

  Wondering again what to tell Carolien about Jay, he pulled out his cell only to discover that she’d not only called again, but messaged a low-res copy of a moving picture. The subject line read:

  grandma’s story about ring

  “Scheisse.” He knew he was supposed to—without delay—hit “play” and watch, but he didn’t feel like it. Instead, he forwarded the moving picture to his dad.

  As he hit “send,” he walked to the living room and looked out the window. His dad was squatting in the grass and scratching his head, staring at the transporter with an expression that suggested his thoughts were far, far away.

  Chapter Eight

  A Fantastical Conversation

  Claude awoke on the couch to a blaring newsmercial. “It’s amazing!” a woman with long orange hair and bright green lips declared. “I just spray it on my clothes and they don’t get stained—ever!”

  He reached for the remote, which was perched on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and clicked “off.” He closed his eyes, hoping to muster the energy to rise, scrub his teeth, and stumble to bed.

  He had a vague sense of having dreamt. He’d been alone, lost, and running because someone had been chasing him. Or maybe he’d been chasing someone. It should have been easy to tell the difference between hunter or hunted, but with every second the texture of the dream grew more distant. He looked around, half expecting to find that the person he’d been chasing (or who’d been chasing him) had followed him into wakefulness.

  He sat up. The room was dimly lit, as if by a last sliver of setting sun, but the source turned out to be wedges of light streaming around the closed kitchen door. He yawned and resisted the temptation to lie down again, suspecting that the couch’s lumpy cushion would, if he stayed there all night, petrify the tightness in his neck into a painful knot.

  The message light on his cell looked ominous, like a warning.

  He picked up the device and squinted at the screen:

  03:04 AM

  3 VM

  He was hopeful that at least one—if not all—of the three voicemails was from Jay. Smiling, he pressed play.

  His mom always began VMs with a huff, as if insulted that he hadn’t answered on the first ring. “[Huff] Hi Dear. How are things? Listen, I know tomorrow isn’t your usual day, but we’re having a gala, and we’d love you to come.” He knew that “we” actually meant “I.” Milly probably didn’t even know she was inviting him, unless this was just another facet of the plot to make them best buds. “It would be so lovely if you could make it—if you’d deign to come.” His finger hovered over the “delete” button. “No. That’s not it. I’m not saying it right. It’s just that…. Oh, I don’t know.”

  There was a long pause. His finger drifted from “delete” as he waited for her to continue. Was she crying? “Oh, sorry. I was thinking, um, about the gala—something I forgot to do.” She suddenly sounded somber. “I’m having trouble focusing, honey. I never have time to focus on work that matters—the foundation and all that. Too much party-planning, I guess.”

  She released four beats of a mirthless laugh, eh-he, eh-he, a dry staccato. Surprisingly, he felt something he hadn’t felt for her in a long time: sympathy. “You’ll probably say no, but please be aware this is a no-strings invitation. You don’t need to worry about what to wear; I’ll have that all set out for you. And you can leave at any time. And you can bring a friend—Carolien or whoever. And Ted is bringing safari animals, not real ones of course, but projections, the latest technology and all that, but apparently they look very real. I’m sure you’ll think they’re …”

  The message ended. She’d probably hit “End” by mistake. He wondered what else she might have said, what other dissatisfactions she might have revealed. Since re-marrying, his mom had always acted as if she were the luckiest person alive. And now she sounded unexpectedly—surprisingly—bitter, like the tourist who’d saved for years to visit Macchu Picchu only to discover that during her long flight it had been razed to build a mega-mall.

  The next VM began with Carolien in mid-blast: “… gat is going on? Call me scheissekopf!” Why were women always dogging him? Mom wanted him at her party; Carolien wanted him to call. “I’ve got sooo much to tell you. You won’t believe how tired I am. I spent hours making that moving picture and then
Mom and Grandma started arguing. I have the worst headache. Let’s get a Shaky.” The call was time-stamped 10:54.

  The next message began with heavy breathing. He smiled. “Sorry,” Jay said, still panting. “Dialing your code got me so excited that I needed a moment to catch my breath.” Then he stopped panting. “I still smell you by the way. Anyway, why don’t you answer? You asleep? That’s the only excuse I’ll accept, although it’s a lame one. So look my dear, my mother told me there’s a big fancy party for Bill Watson at your mom and stepdad’s tomorrow. Did you forget? My mom’s going and she says it’s the biggest party of the season, so I’m sure you must be going, which means that if you don’t invite me yourself, I’m calling Eric and having him invite me, so you see you can’t get rid of me, ha ha. No, I’ll understand if you don’t want me there, if you think it’s too awkward or something. But it might be more fun to invite me, don’t you think? That is if your mother taught you any manners. Hope you’re dreaming of me.”

  He hadn’t been interested in going to his mother’s party­—until now. If Millstone was good for anything, it would be to impress Jay, since his house was one of the largest in town. And if his mom had a suit picked out, it was no doubt a top brand in the latest cut. Jay was certain to be impressed.

  “Scheisse.” His dad’s muffled voice came from the kitchen.

  Claude stood and walked through the darkened room toward the light. He heard the fast tapping of fingers on a keyboard and gently pushed open the swinging door.

  “Dad?” he said softly, squinting in the brightness.

  His dad was at the table hunched over his tablet. When he looked up, he jumped in his chair. “Man alive! You startled me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” Peering at Claude, he looked particularly haggard and disheveled. His hair was unkempt, his shirt wrinkled, and he had dark circles under his eyes. A grey pallor accentuated his stubble, which looked as if it had acquired a day or two’s length since dinner.

  “You look awful,” Claude said, yawning as he sat down at the table.