Dark Matter(88)

The snowy weather has brought the crowds indoors.

For the moment at least, I feel perfectly anonymous.

We find a bench off in a quiet corner, out of the flow of foot traffic.

Sitting between Daniela and Charlie, I think of all the other Jasons in Chicago at this moment willing to do anything, willing to kill, just to be where I’m sitting.

I take a breath.

Where to even begin?

I look Daniela in the eye and brush a wisp of hair behind her ear.

I look into Charlie’s eyes.

I tell them how much I love them.

That I’ve come through hell to be sitting here between them.

I start with my abduction on a crisp October night when I was forced to drive at gunpoint to an abandoned power plant in South Chicago.

I tell them about my fear, how I thought I was going to be murdered, about waking up instead in the hangar of a mysterious science lab, where people I’d never seen appeared not only to know me, but to have been anticipating my return.

They listen intently to the details of my escape from Velocity Laboratories on that first night, and my return to our house on Eleanor Street, to a home that wasn’t my home, where I lived alone as a man who had chosen to dedicate his life to his research.

A world where Daniela and I had never been married and Charlie had never been born.

I tell Daniela about meeting her doppelg?nger at the art installation in Bucktown.

My capture and imprisonment in the lab.

My escape with Amanda into the box.

I describe the multiverse.

Every door I walked through.

Every ruined world.

Every Chicago that wasn’t quite right, but which brought me one step closer to home.

There are things I leave out.

Things I can’t yet bring myself to say.

The two nights I spent with Daniela after the installation opening.

The two times I watched her die.

I’ll share these moments eventually, when the time is right.

I try to imagine what it must feel like for Daniela and Charlie to hear this story.

When the tears begin to slide down Daniela’s face, I ask, “Do you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you.”

“Charlie?”

My son nods, but the look in his eyes is miles away. He’s staring vacantly at the shoppers strolling past, and I wonder how much of what I’ve said has actually landed.

How does someone even begin to process such a thing?

Daniela wipes her eyes and says, “I just want to be sure I understand exactly what you’re telling me. So on the night you went out to Ryan Holder’s celebration, this other Jason stole your life? He took you into the box and stranded you in his world so he could live in this one? With me?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“That means the man I’ve been living with is a stranger.”

“Not completely. I think he and I were the same person up until fifteen years ago.”

“What happened fifteen years ago?”

“You told me you were pregnant with Charlie. The multiverse exists because every choice we make creates a fork in the road, which leads into a parallel world. That night you told me you were pregnant didn’t just happen the way you and I remember it. It unfolded in a multitude of permutations. In one world, the one we live in now, you and I decided to make a life together. We got married. Had Charlie. Made a home. In another, I decided that becoming a father in my late twenties wasn’t the path for me. I worried my work would be lost, that my ambition would die.

“So there’s a version of our life where we didn’t keep the baby. Charlie. You pursued your art. I pursued my science. And eventually, we parted ways. That man, the version of me you’ve been living with for the last month—he built the box.”

“Which is a large version of that thing you were working on when we first met—the cube?”

“Exactly. And somewhere along the way, he realized everything he’d given up by letting his work be the thing that defined him. He looked back at the choice he made fifteen years ago with regret. But the box can’t take you back or forward in time. It only connects all possible worlds at the same moment, in the present. So he searched until he found my world. And he traded my life for his.”

The look on Daniela’s face is pure shock and disgust.

She rises from the bench and runs toward the restrooms.

Charlie starts after her, but I put my hand on his shoulder and say, “Just give her a minute.”

“I knew something wasn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You—well, not you, him—he had this different, like, energy about him. We talked more, especially at dinner. He was just, I don’t know…”

“What?”

“Different.”

There are things I want to ask my son, questions blazing through my mind.

Was he more fun?

A better father?

A better husband?

Was life more exciting with the imposter?

But I’m afraid the answers to those questions might shatter me.

Daniela returns.

So pale.

As she sits back down, I ask, “You all right?”

“I have a question for you.”

“What?”