Jonas did. They had tried for years without success.
But Amanda shook her head slightly. That wasn’t the difficulty she was referring to. “You have no idea how hard it is to compete with a Nobel Prize.”
“I think you found a way,” he said, still cradling the little plastic stick in his fingers.
The official pulled Jonas aside. “They’re about to announce you, Dr. Cullen.” But Jonas’s eyes didn’t leave the tiny stick. It looked like a piece of a toy. How could he possibly turn away from such a wonder?
Behind the curtain, another Nobel official was addressing the crowd. Her voice was amplified by the Aula Magna’s natural acoustics. “Good evening,” she boomed. “Thank you all for coming. As you know, the Nobel Foundation statutes require laureates to deliver a lecture on a subject connected with the work for which their prize was awarded . . .” She reeled off Jonas’s academic qualifications and professional achievements, but Jonas wasn’t listening. He felt a surreal sensation, a reminder that he was living out a dream. “Tonight, it is my privilege to introduce this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his mathematical theorem confirming the existence of parallel universes—otherwise known as the ‘Many Worlds Proof’—Dr. Jonas Cullen.”
The amphitheater thundered with applause. Jonas’s anxiety returned in a rush. Amanda must have noticed because she reassured him: “You’re going to be fantastic.”
“I love you too much,” he told her.
“I love you more,” she replied.
“Dr. Cullen,” the official continued, “will go into detail about the work that has garnered him this honor, and I’m eager for him to astonish you, as he has astonished the world. But the not-so-simple principle underlying his work is this: our universe is just one among countless others.”
“Ten bucks says she mentions Frost.” Amanda winked.
“The American poet Robert Frost—”
“Told you.” Amanda grinned.
“—famously wrote: ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler . . .’ There are those who contend that this poem is an allusion to multiple realities, the universe diverging into multiple paths. Dr. Cullen has used quantum theory to prove the existence of such a ‘multiverse.’ And that is why he is this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.”
The ensuing applause trembled the building. Jonas squeezed the pregnancy test in his hand and considered it the true honor of the evening.
“I’m going to go take my seat,” Amanda said, leaving him with a kiss that he considered all too brief under the circumstances.
He forced himself to take a deep breath. And then another. The audience continued to applaud as they waited for him to take the stage. He pushed aside the curtain, strode out, and was momentarily blinded by the spotlight, which enveloped the audience beyond the first row in darkness. The Nobel official who had introduced him clasped his hand and gave him a peck on the cheek. When he took his place at the podium, he found a second copy of his speech dutifully waiting for him.
Jonas squinted against the brightness and peered out toward the front row, where Amanda was sitting in the center seat, as promised. Her smile was bright enough to compete with the spotlight. Pride radiated off her. Jonas felt the pregnancy test in his grip and experienced the little jolt that came from two people with a secret. They shared a knowing look. An instant of private rapture. The happiest moment of their lives.
Neither had any idea this would be her last night on earth.
NOW
Every night he has the same dream, and each time it sounds like a symphony. The squeal of three tires trying in vain to find purchase on slick asphalt emits a wail evocative of brass horns. The limousine’s metallic hide scraping along the guardrail of Stockholm’s Centralbron overpass makes for a perverse violin. Each ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk of the punctured tire—as regular as a heartbeat—is a powerful strike against a timpani’s head. The chorus of honking cars as the limo leaps from the overpass rivals any horn section. All these instruments conspire in unison to craft a stomach-churning composition.
But there’s nothing musical about what always comes after. The impact of the plummeting limousine sounds like nothing less than the end of the world.
It jolts him awake, as it does every night, and spares him the sight of Amanda, dangling upside down, hanging like a slaughtered fawn, her limp form straining against the nylon seat belt, her mouth agape, crimson blood leaking from one corner. Amanda’s face is etched with confusion, as though astonished by what’s happened. Astounded but lacking the spark of life.
His eyes snap open before he has to face the terrible image. This is how he awakes every morning, his sheets cast aside in fitful, restless slumber, soaked through with sweat. Every morning. For two years.
This particular morning, he awakes in a room in NH Genève Aéroport, an unassuming hotel just a five-minute drive from Geneva Airport. The overhead wail of the airplanes taking off and landing competes with the bleat of his iPhone’s alarm, set for 5:00 a.m. Dawn’s first light spits through the open blinds of the modest room, illuminating his solitude.
He staggers to the bathroom and catches himself in the mirror. He doesn’t recognize the man he sees as Jonas Cullen, PhD and Nobel laureate. Gone is any patina of youthfulness. Instead of a man in his late thirties, a fortysomething stranger stares back at him. Unshaven. Unkempt. Eyes that once held the spark of brilliance now bloodshot and weary.
Without bothering to flush or wash his hands, Jonas pads out to the chair where he laid out his clothing the night before. A simple shirt. A pair of slacks. A sweater. All custom made. All woven from cotton and other natural fibers. Even the soles of his leather shoes are made from caucho, a natural rubber. Each article of clothing—save for his socks and underwear—is dyed black. Nothing is artificial. Not a stitch is manufactured. This is important.
Once dressed, he moves over to the room’s small desk. Atop it is an aluminum briefcase with a combination lock. Jonas wheels the dials to Amanda’s birthday, pops it open, and lifts the briefcase’s lid to reveal a cluster of circuitry. He constructed the device only after arriving in Switzerland, assembling it from parts purchased from electronics and hobby stores. It would have been impossible to smuggle the technology through airport security. Its appearance is indistinguishable from that of a bomb. It would take three doctorates to divine its true purpose.
In the center of the technical mélange is a Raspberry Pi, a credit card–size computer. Jonas snakes a USB cable from it and plugs the other end into the HDMI port on the hotel room’s flat-screen, converting it into a makeshift monitor. A keyboard connects via Bluetooth, and Jonas goes to work, encoding a final set of calculations, which he confirms against the formulae inscribed on his inner left arm.
The tattoo is less than a month old. Its edges still betray a hint of inflammation, angry red skin, a wound not yet fully healed. The formulae are complex equations that cascade down the length of his forearm. Letters. Numbers. Greek symbols. Parentheses and braces. All with a timeless beauty and flow, like text on an ancient sandstone tablet.
The tattoo artist laughed when Jonas showed her what he wanted. She had thought it was a joke, some elaborate prank on the part of her employer or perhaps a coworker. A bit of whimsy to liven up the day. But Jonas had assured her that he was serious, that he needed the work completed in a single painful session, and that it needed to be precise.
He hopes the tattoo won’t be necessary. If he’s successful, he’ll have no further need of it. But there are still millions of ways that things could go wrong. No, that’s not right, he corrects himself. There are an infinite number of ways.
The television flashes green, indicating that the encoding is complete. Jonas reaches inside the briefcase, into the menagerie of circuit boards and microchips, and finds the ring of tungsten at its center. It is featureless but for a small groove where it forms an electrical connection with the rest of his invention. Removing it, he considers the small object, a simple band of dull gray metal. Beneath a layer of aluminum so thin as to be translucent, a small white light throbs like a vein.
Jonas slips the ring on the finger where he used to wear his wedding band. It radiates a subtle warmth, generated by a tiny lithium battery inside, against his skin.
A photograph hangs taped inside the briefcase’s lid. Amanda. Radiant, standing in Manhattan’s Central Park. A day that can only be described as perfect. She holds a Frisbee, fluorescent-pink plastic suffused with sunlight. A diamond engagement ring is taped to the underside, its sparkle outshone only by the sparkle in her eyes. Her smile is luminous, all teeth and naked exuberance.
This is his favorite photo of her. He knows each detail like he knows his own name. The second piercing in her left ear, devoid of a stud. The faint stain of yellow on her T-shirt from the hot dog they’d shared earlier that day. The hint of a dimple in her right cheek. The collie prancing in the background, its playful form slightly out of focus. He could draw the entire image from memory but still drinks the picture in, knowing that this is the last time he’ll ever see it.
A knocking at the door—three precise raps—returns him to the present. He glances at his iPhone: 5:45 a.m. Right on the tick.
Jonas opens the door to find Macon standing outside, all six feet, three inches of him. He wears a dark gray commando sweater, black jeans, and black leather boots. No jewelry to break up the utilitarian ensemble. He has a face like leather, wrinkled and hardened by too much time in the hottest places around the globe. Tiny strands of gray fleck a goatee groomed with military precision. His eyes remind Jonas of two black holes, drawing in everything and emitting nothing. Eyes that have seen the worst the world has to offer.
“It’s go time,” Macon says with as much emotion as one might use to report the weather. Jonas just nods. He moves to leave, but with the barest hint of effort, Macon blocks his path. “No pay, no play.”
Jonas stops short. He completely forgot. Retreating into the room and moving toward the closet, he realizes that he’s more scared than he’d let himself admit. What he’s about to attempt could very well result in his arrest, injury, or death.
On the floor of the closet is a navy blue gym bag. Jonas lifts it, feeling its heft. He turns around, surprised that Macon is standing right behind him. Pushing that breach of etiquette aside, Jonas hands him the bag.
Macon unzips it, and Jonas watches him mentally tally the stacks of euros bound with currency straps. “A lotta money.” Then, a hint of suspicion. An incredulity honed by a lifetime of dealing with the less scrupulous members of humanity. “Didn’t think you academic types pulled down much bank,” he says. He makes “academic types” sound like a curse.
“My wife had a life insurance policy.”
This answer evidently satisfies Macon, because he produces a Glock 19 from beneath his jacket, expertly trombones the action, and holds it out to Jonas.
“I specified no fatalities, Mr. Macon.” Jonas had been firm on this point, but now the words come across as slightly ridiculous, as if Jonas were as accustomed to hiring mercenaries as he is ordering a pizza.
“Well, Doc,” Macon patiently explains, “there’s what we plan for, and there’s what actually happens.”
Jonas thinks on that for a second. He takes the gun.
The Glock digs uncomfortably into the small of Jonas’s back where he has secreted it as instructed. Although he hopes he won’t have to use it, he now knows how, after two weeks of intensive instruction by Macon and his team. For fourteen days, they drilled and rehearsed and trained. For fourteen days, Jonas pretended he was someone else to learn what he needed to do. Like quantum physics, the field to which he’d devoted his life, the training had its own rules and, within that structure, a kind of beauty. Jonas has always been good at following instructions, taking comfort in the bright lines drawn between “do” and “don’t.” Between “correct” and “incorrect.” But the line he’s straddling now—between “right” and “wrong”—is blurred and indistinct, a suggestion more than a rule.
He strides with Macon across the tarmac at Aéroport de Genève. Spinning up ahead of them, its shape backlit by the morning sun, is a Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin. Although its carbon fiber rotor blades are revolving a good four feet above his head, Macon gestures for Jonas to duck as they climb aboard.
Three men wait inside. They wear bulletproof vests and balaclavas, each man professionally inspecting semiautomatic rifles that Jonas can’t identify. The sounds produced by their ministrations—the snapping in of bullets, the slamming home of cartridges, the racking and reracking of actions—fills the cabin with a percussive staccato that reminds Jonas of an orchestra tuning up.
