Jonas didn’t argue and nuzzled his head against her chest. It was slick with sweat, and as his finger grazed a trail along her abdomen, he’d never known himself to be so content—a peace that fractured with an apocalyptic-sounding bang against the door of the apartment.
“It seems like someone has other ideas,” Jonas deadpanned. Given the early hour on a Saturday, he assumed it was someone knocking on the door of the wrong apartment. That was fine. His mood was such that the apocalypse itself could come knocking and it wouldn’t dampen his spirits. He pulled himself away—exulting in the feeling of his arms and legs rubbing against hers—and found his bathrobe. “Don’t move,” he said as he cinched it closed. “I’ll be right back.”
The banging continued, louder and more insistent. Jonas padded to the entryway as fast as he could.
“I’m coming. Just calm down . . .”
He moved to the door and opened it to find Victor standing on the other side. He was red faced, his nostrils flaring. His jaw was a coiled spring. “How could you?” he hissed. “How could you do this?”
“Victor?”
Victor shouldered his way past, letting himself inside. He was breathing heavy, his face ruddy and covered by a patina of sweat. “One of your TAs was talking about it,” he fumed. “She said you were close to a breakthrough.” He sounded as though he was still processing this, still straining to believe it. “That you were close to a mathematical proof of the existence of parallel worlds. Parallel worlds.” His tone was a mix of fury and accusation. “Tell me she’s wrong,” he demanded.
“Victor—”
“Tell me!” The room seemed to shake with the volume of his rage.
Jonas kept his tone level, locating a calm that surprised him under the circumstances. “I tried to show you my work a year ago,” he said.
“Your work?” Victor thundered. “Your work?”
“Victor—”
“You mean my work!” His furor was volcanic. Saliva flew from his mouth. Jonas feared he might be beyond reason, that his fury was homicidal. He imagined Amanda in the bedroom, reaching for her phone, dialing nine one one.
“Victor,” Jonas said, working to maintain his calm, “the idea of parallel universes—the Many Worlds Theory—that didn’t originate with you.”
“You knew I was working on a proof.” His finger jabbed at the air, barely missing Jonas’s nose.
“Yes. Yes, I did.” Jonas spread his hands wide, a gesture of conciliation and peace. “But you gave up on it.” Jonas struggled not to sound accusatory. “You let it go, Victor. But I was inspired. I had hoped we could work on it together—that’s why I showed you my calculations—but you rebuffed them, Victor. You were adamant about not revisiting a topic that had frustrated you. Which I completely understand,” he added, coating his tone in reason and empathy.
Victor paced, stalking the apartment, ready to strike. He gave no indication that he’d listened to a word of what Jonas just said. To the contrary, he seemed to be in a world of his own, all vitriol and ire. Jonas couldn’t believe it, but Victor had him genuinely afraid. In his mind, he willed for Amanda to call the police.
“I reviewed your equations,” Victor hissed in disgust. “It’s my work. Dressed up, but my work.”
“Victor,” Jonas started. His mind raced, desperate to find the right way of expressing himself. “I never saw your work. You told me about it, yes, but I never—whatever equations you reviewed, they were mine. And mine alone.”
Amanda quietly emerged from the bedroom. She clutched her bathrobe tight around her. Afraid. Unaccustomed to witnessing such naked anger.
Victor remained focused on Jonas. “But you want all the glory for yourself,” he accused.
“There is no glory,” Jonas answered. “There is just me. Exploring an idea I couldn’t get out of my head. I’m still a year away from publishing.” The word “publishing” flew out of his mouth unbidden. Jonas felt his blood cool and his stomach clench. He had just waved a crimson flag in front of a bull.
But Victor seemed to calm. Jonas could feel him grow cold. If anything, it was more terrifying than Victor’s wrath.
“Publishing?” Victor asked, making it sound like an atrocity. “By the time I’m done, you’ll be lucky to get a job teaching eighth-grade physics.”
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even a promise. Victor had told him what was going to happen. A prediction.
“Victor—” Jonas said, convinced he could still find the words to calm his friend.
But Victor disappeared out the door.
Jonas stared at the open doorway and noticed he was sweating, even though he felt cold. He closed the door, and Amanda surged to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”
No, he wasn’t. He didn’t question whether Victor’s accusations had been right. Despite the doubts and self-recriminations that would later follow, Jonas knew in his bones that he had committed no plagiarism, no theft of ideas. He knew his work was his own. But he dreaded Victor and what he knew the man was capable of. He shuddered, without realizing it or intending to, and he felt as if he had awoken the archetypal sleeping giant. And lost a friend. And, if Victor was to be believed, his career.
“Don’t worry,” he assured Amanda. “It’s all going to be all right.” It was the first time he had ever lied to her.
NOW
Jonas retches for what feels like days. Apparently spent, he remains on the cold tile, leaning against the porcelain toilet. He wipes away bile with the back of his hand and throws up again.
He decides he’s not going to move until he is confident the vomiting has stopped. And until he can get his rubberized legs to obey his commands.
As he sits on the bathroom’s hard tile, his mind races. Although he’s in another reality, he can fathom only one person killing him: Victor Kovacevic.
He now believes Victor to be capable of anything. He’s already demonstrated his capacity for murder twice, once with Eva by proxy and again by his own hand with Amanda. And that, Jonas reminds himself, is just the Victor he knows. There remains the possibility—if not the likelihood—that this reality has a Victor of its own.
The possibility of a Victor originating from this universe raises the question of why he would kill this reality’s Jonas if Amanda was already dead here. Then again, what drives a man like Victor, in any reality, to homicidal madness?
Back in the bedroom, Jonas sets about the task of deciphering the impenetrable formulae that cover the walls. The cacophony of math appears impossible to untangle. But as Jonas pores over the jagged scrawl, it becomes ever clearer that his counterpart was working on multiverse theory. On one wall is a rudimentary version of the Many Worlds Proof that won him the Nobel in his universe. From there, the equations reach out to embrace the theories and calculations that underlie the science behind untethering from one universe to travel to an infinite number of others.
The formulae are familiar, albeit with eccentric alterations, tiny rhetorical flourishes, like a song covered by another singer. The work of a mind almost identical to Jonas’s own, yet changed in minute ways by a parallel existence, a shadow lifetime.
Then fireworks spark off in his head, and he feels a sharp pang at the base of his skull. He staggers forward and collides with the wall. He tries to pull back a curtain of pain to see clearly. He pivots around to face the attacker but is met with a man’s fist. But Jonas refuses to recoil. He keeps his head low and leads with his shoulder and wills himself forward, bulldogging, throwing himself at the other man.
The impact sends them both spiraling to the floor. The man’s fists fly up at Jonas, but Jonas is atop him. He has leverage and uses it, raining down a series of wild punches. He unleashes the blows without anger, only the desperate need to put the other man down and end the attack.
Jonas retracts a fist, ready to deliver another blow.
And stops.
The man beneath him isn’t moving. He’s still conscious, but the fight has gone out of him. He appears disoriented. And not, it seems, from Jonas’s attack. He appears manic. Unhinged. His face is gaunt and unshaven.
But Jonas instantly recognizes it as his own.
He stares, straining to make sense of this.
Another doppelgänger.
He expects only one per universe. And this reality’s Jonas Cullen is rotting away in a cramped crawl space.
In the interval it takes for Jonas’s mind to reconcile what his eyes are seeing, the other Jonas recovers his senses and sends his fist hurling into the side of Jonas’s head. Jonas rears back, holding a hand up against another volley as he staggers to his feet.
Other Jonas stands and assaults him again. Jonas falls back against the nightstand. He and the photograph of Amanda in Central Park crash to the floor as the doppelgänger surges forward, pressing his advantage.
Jonas struggles to stand, but his counterpart starts kicking him, causing Jonas to fold himself into the fetal position to protect his ribs and make himself as small a target as possible. Other Jonas keeps up the assault, alternating between kicking and stomping.
