“Which do you like better? That universe or this one?”
“This one,” she said with a smile. “By a light-year.”
That was a good answer.
One night in bed, he asked her, “Are wormholes real?”
“Jeremy, this is your pillow talk?” He loved the way his name sounded in her accent. He called her Chi-Chi, which she found equally charming.
“Just looking for an emergency escape route,” he said, happy to be where he was for once.
They were in her flat, her bed. He liked sleeping at her place. And it made his mother deliriously happy that he was finally dating someone she was allowed to meet.
“Wormholes…it depends.”
“On what?” He expected Chi to say something about math or GTR, which is how cosmologists, he’d learned, casually refer to Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
“Depends on whether the universe is infinite.”
“Let’s say it isn’t.”
“Very well,” she said in a crisp tone. This was her tutoring voice. “In a finite universe, it’s impossible anything should exist.”
“Anything?”
“The world. The universe. You. Me. Us. The likelihood of life existing, thriving, and then developing consciousness? Infinitesimal. So infinitesimal, this world is statistically impossible. Yet”—she fluttered her hands as if the world were a prize on a game show—“here we are.”
“But if the universe is infinite?”
“Then yes. Yes to everything. Infinite universe equals infinite outcomes.”
“Unicorns?”
“Yes?”
“Dragons?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Infinite monkeys typing infinite Hamlets?”
“Yes, in an infinite universe, wormholes have to exist. All possible worlds exist. In fact, there are no possibilities in an infinite universe, just eventualities.”
“What do you think it is? Finite or infinite?”
“Oh, I don’t know what I think, but I know what I want. I want an infinite universe.” She rolled onto her side to face him. “Think about what it means if literally anything is possible. We could be anything you can think of.”
“Anything?”
“This entire universe we’re in right now could be tiny, fitting in the palm of some being’s hand so far beyond us, we’re like ants to a giant. And the giant keeps us in jars on her windowsill. We’re a computer simulation. We’re characters in a storybook left on a train by a girl late for dinner. We’re a dream an ancient god is dreaming, and any minute now…he will wake. Ask any question in an infinite universe, and the answer is yes. Always yes.”
All worlds are possible? Jeremy wanted to believe there was a world where he and Rafe never left Shanandoah, a universe where they’re still there, riding out with Skya on their horses, Freddy and Sunny, killing Bright Boys, hunting snow deer and drinking sweet rainberry wine, climbing the great spring trees to watch the firemoths come out and flash their autumn-red wings…
In an infinite universe, he and Rafe haven’t spent the last thirteen years apart. That’s the universe he wants to live in, a universe where he could say to Rafe, “Do you miss me as much as I miss you?” or “Do you love me as much as I love you?” and the answer is yes, yes, forever yes. Even if that universe existed only on the pages of a book written by a storyteller in another world in another time in another dimension. Did it matter?
He and Chi parted ways very amicably when he was called back to his work. When she asked him if they’d meet again, he reminded her that if the universe were infinite, they undoubtedly would, which made her smile when she kissed him goodbye.
In an infinite universe, all stories were true stories.
When you begin to question your sanity, remind yourself that the fact that something impossible happened doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
It had been almost fifteen years since Jeremy left Shanandoah, since he’d lost Rafe, and he still hadn’t found the missing princess. Maybe he never would. Maybe she’d be lost forever and so would he.
Then his mother died of a stroke, died so fast he wasn’t able to make it home to tell her goodbye.
In his grief, he sleepwalked through his mother’s wake, forgetting the names of her colleagues and students as soon as they introduced themselves. Later, he’d remember only one person he met that day. A woman in dark blue shook his hand and said, “Jeremy, dear, I know your mother was so proud of you. She told me all the time.”
“Thank you,” he said for the thousandth time.
“I also knew your father, Jeremy. I was at his funeral too. Shame.”
He turned back and looked at her. “You were?”
“So young. I’m so glad you’re doing so well. We were all a bit worried.”
“Worried about what?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s hereditary, they say. Schizophrenia. But you’re quite well, obviously. A hero even. It’s…Well, it’s good to see you. Only wish it was under better circumstances and—”
