Don’t look back.
NOW
Only in the mind of a scientist, Victor reflects, could curiosity eclipse vengeance. The thought of sabotaging Jonas’s tether remains warm, a comfort. But he set it aside once the Cray reported that Jonas had returned to his Riverside Drive apartment. By his count, that would make at least three separate universes where Jonas had chosen to call the brownstone home.
Victor had been so singularly focused on revenge that he hadn’t taken the time to consider a multiverse’s worth of Jonases. He knew they existed, of course. But his hatred for “his” Jonas was so lasered that the notion of doppelgängers was an unwelcome distraction. Now, though, the thought of Jonas finding a twin—meeting him, talking to him, and, God forbid, gaining assistance from him—can’t be ignored.
And so Victor stands in a living room, which stirs a memory of visits he’d made to the same home in another universe. But now the place reeks and is in disarray. He finds an arrangement of photographs, all turned down or backward. The Jonas who resides in this universe knew Amanda and lost her. The thought brings a smile.
He stands there for longer than he should. At some point, Jonas—this universe’s version or the one Victor knows—will either come home or hear him walking about. Victor should be concerned, afraid of a confrontation, but he isn’t. That’s what the M&P 9 Shield at the small of his back is for.
A voice comes from the apartment’s recesses, slurred and laced with humor, but the voice is unmistakably Jonas’s. “Came back, huh? Nice to see you come to your senses.” An amused snort. “Always knew I was smart.”
Victor follows the familiar voice and enters the bedroom. The smell is significantly worse in here. Black garbage bags hang over the windows. The only furniture is a ladder, a chair, the bed, and a nightstand burdened with stacks of papers. The once-white bedsheets are a grayish yellow and swirled in a torrent. Equations, sketchy and desperate, flow across every wall. Erratic though they might be, Victor sees in them the calculations of multiversal destinations.
And then he sees him. Standing near the bed. Bloodshot eyes. Sallow skin painted with a thin layer of stubble. A mop of hair as unruly as those bedsheets. But still recognizable as Jonas. At least, a Jonas. He sways on his feet. A bottle of bourbon, with maybe a mouthful left in it, dangles from his fingers.
“Who the hell are you?” this Other Jonas says, his tongue languid. Whatever fear he might have of an intruder in his home has evidently been muted by the bourbon.
Interesting, Victor observes, apparently I don’t exist here.
He returns his gaze to the equations on the wall. That this universe’s Jonas managed to develop the Many Worlds Proof without a Victor Kovacevic to crib from should be vexing. But Victor’s narcissism stands against the thought like a wall, preventing him from entertaining the notion that any version of Jonas is capable of discovering the secrets of the multiverse without drafting off Victor’s brilliance.
“Who are you?” this Jonas barks, louder and more insistent than before.
Ignoring him, Victor continues to study the manic formulae carpeting the walls. He pushes through the scattershot mania of the equations, working to excavate the math, the thinking, that lies beneath.
“Hey!” Other Jonas is shouting now. “Get the hell out of here before I—”
“Before you what?” Victor cuts him off. “You can barely stand up, Jonas.”
“How do you know my name?”
Victor waves at the walls. “Where did you get these calculations? Are they yours?” His voice adopts the tone of accusation. “Are they his?”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m calling the police,” Other Jonas threatens, despite the dead body beneath the closet. He begins to hunt for his phone, but the search appears hampered by his inebriated state. Victor slams him up against one of the annotated walls.
“Where,” Victor repeats, his voice clipped with impatience, “did you get these calculations?”
Other Jonas stares back, trying to fight his way through a fog of liquored confusion. “I . . . they’re mine.”
“I doubt that very much.” Indeed, this Jonas appears as though he can barely calculate the tip at a restaurant.
“It was—it was a while ago. Before . . .” He glances down at the bottle hanging limply in his hand.
Victor recognizes the look in his eyes as shame. “He came here, didn’t he? The other you.”
Other Jonas tries and fails to fight through the haze of booze, stammering for an answer. But Victor has no interest in waiting. He resumes reviewing the equations. The formulae are rendered in an erratic hand, but he recognizes the math.
“Your doppelgänger,” he says, “the Jonas Cullen of another universe, a parallel world. He came here, didn’t he?”
“Who are you?” Other Jonas asks again, now seeming more frightened than confused.
Victor turns and lasers in on Other Jonas. “He was here.”
“He’s gone now,” Jonas responds.
“Where did he go?”
Other Jonas shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Victor’s forearm pistons out and pins him to the wall with enough force to sway the lamp overhead. “But you know something.”
Victor watches Other Jonas’s expression change. Slowly, fear and confusion transmute to anger at this stranger who has invaded his home. Victor watches as defiance wells up in the man. “I told him where to go.”
At first, it sounds to Victor as though Other Jonas is claiming he told his doppelgänger to go to hell. But then Other Jonas repeats himself. “I told him where to go.” This time, the words come out less defiant. Simple. Almost plaintive. I told him where to go.
Keeping the man fixed to the wall, Victor glances back at the equations. A terrible epiphany begins to take shape. “You found another one,” Victor says. “You found another universe where she’s still alive.” The words spill out with reverence and awe. Somehow, this addled drunk has found something Victor had deemed impossible.
Victor looks back at the math on the walls. He scans the equations, eyes flying across the formulae, trying to pluck the universe’s location from the numbers and symbols on display.
“It’s not there,” Other Jonas says. “The location of that universe. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?” Victor doesn’t answer. “I wrote it in a notebook. The other me took it.”
Victor returns his focus to Other Jonas. “Why didn’t you use it?” he asks through gritted teeth. “Why are you even here, in this universe? Why aren’t you with her right now?”
Other Jonas explains his predicament. The news that Victor will eventually lose his ability to slip realities chills him. He feels himself blanch. A smug grin takes shape on Other Jonas’s face. “You’re slipping realities too,” he says, his voice laden with realization. “Another explorer. Well, explorer, the concept that your cells might eventually lose their ability to travel the multiverse is something you might want to concern yourself with,” he taunts. “Wouldn’t want to find yourself trapped in a universe that’s not your own.”
Victor shrugs off the jeer, relinquishing his grip on Other Jonas. Victor’s fingers run across the surface of his tether bracelet, manipulating the capacitance sensors built into its housing. “You look quite miserable here,” he tells Other Jonas. “I’m glad.”
