“You said Amanda died in a car crash?”
“Yes.”
Eva points to her computer monitor. “In this reality, she died in a plane crash.”
Jonas fights to keep the image from his mind. He’d have better luck holding back the tide.
“A car crash,” Eva is saying, “a plane crash. Have you considered the possibility . . .”
“That the universe wants my wife dead?”
“The universe doesn’t ‘want’ anything, and I was going to put it a bit more delicately than that. But generally . . . yes.”
“I’m definitely aware that variations in the multiverse are limited by what we call ‘fate.’” His eyes wander her desk—the top of which is carpeted with an academic’s organized chaos—and sees a framed photograph of a man in military uniform. “Your husband?” he asks.
Eva darkens slightly, the affect of a widow. “Yes. He—”
“Died in action,” Jonas says, completing the thought. “Afghanistan?”
Eva shakes her head. “Israel.” Jonas knows her faraway look well. “I suppose the universe wants Brian dead too.” She looks to Jonas, and her tone is empathetic but firm. “But you don’t see me breaking the laws of the universe to be with him. Why do you get a second chance when the rest of us don’t? What makes you so special?”
Eva’s doppelgänger had asked the same question. So had Victor aboard the airliner. Each time, Jonas evaded answering.
“What makes you so special?” Eva repeats.
“Because I’m the one who can do it,” Jonas says. “Don’t tell me that if you had the means to be with your husband again—”
“Don’t,” Eva warns. Again, Jonas is reminded that they’re not friends in this reality.
“—that you wouldn’t make everything of that opportunity,” Jonas continues. “And if you had that chance and didn’t take it? Wouldn’t that be a kind of murder?”
“That’s offensive.”
“But not wrong. My life’s work has been about seeing the world as it is. Not how we want it to be or wish it to be, but how it really is. The rules that comprise our reality.” Bottom line: “I can’t pretend I don’t have the ability to find her. And with that ability comes a responsibility, don’t you think?”
Eva rubs her forehead as though trying to push an idea into it. Her jaw pulses with gritted teeth. “I thought you didn’t know which universe your wife is in.”
Jonas pulls up his sleeve. Other Jonas’s equations run up his arm. “These calculations were worked up by a doppelgänger of mine, a version of myself from another reality.”
Eva pulls on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and examines the formulae with a practiced eye. “Don’t take this personally, but from the look of these equations, I think this other you might just be a bit smarter.”
“And a bit crazier. Either way, he had a breakthrough.” Jonas taps the new tattoo with his free hand. “He calculated the correct reality. The one—the only one left—where she is still alive.”
Eva studies the equations. Encountering an Eva who pursued physics instead of branching off into psychiatry is a lucky turn. “If I’m reading this right, you’re going to need energy to untether yourself again and make the jump to the proper reality. A lot of energy.”
“I know. I’ve done it before.”
For the first time, Eva appears incredulous. She scoffs, “Where could you possibly get your hands on that much quantum energy?”
“I broke into CERN.”
Eva blinks. “What’s a CERN?”
Jonas deflates, his spirits dashed by the fecklessness of parallel realities. “There’s no Large Hadron Collider in this reality?”
“I don’t know what that is.” Regret passes over her face.
“It’s a particle accelerator. Without one . . .” He can’t complete the thought. Can’t summon the energy to say the words aloud for fear that doing so would make the hopelessness of his situation real. The thought of chancing another reality-slip, of squandering what little quantum energy his cells contain on another ill-fated attempt, is crushing.
Then, a lifeline. Eva posits, “There’s the Superconducting Linear Accelerator in Hiroshima.”
Jonas sparks back to life. “What?”
“I’m not sure if the specs are the same, but I can find out for you.”
Jonas’s head ratchets up and down, nodding as though to will the idea into being. “Thank you,” he breathes.
Eva flashes him a look. Not so fast. “Even if it’s what you’re looking for, it’s not an easy facility to gain access to.”
“Neither was CERN.”
“So how’d you get in?”
“I hired a group of mercenaries,” Jonas answers, immediately understanding how ridiculous that sounds. “Really.”
“Maybe we can find a better way,” she deadpans.
“That would be optimal.”
