The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(134)

Their gloomy predictions came true two months sooner than expected, because several of Wells’s twins decided to bring forward their arrival in this world. It was clear that the different clocks in the different theaters, and even on the different stages, weren’t synchronized but kept different times, which meant that some performances started before others. The following months were a complete torment for Wells, who experienced the same horrific seizures each time the miracle of life occurred in another universe. It seemed as if his twins lacked the most basic organizational skills, because, far from arranging to be born all at the same time, they had decided to come out each according to his whim, causing a series of staggered births that threatened to undermine Wells’s sanity. There were days when the attacks were less ferocious, probably because fewer twins were being born, and Wells managed to grin and bear them, curling up on his bed in the dark, clasping Jane’s hand in his, a vinegar compress on his forehead, as if he were suffering from a common migraine. He was reminded of the regular headaches he used to get and concluded that they must be due to random births of twins in universes where time moved at a quicker pace. He also recalled the strange visions that had assailed him, and that he had assumed were hallucinations caused by the relentless sensation of randomness. Now it dawned on him, not without some trepidation, that he must have been connecting with twins who had already been born. It felt as if he was in a stretch of universal time where the worlds were in a state of effervescence, and his twins were bursting onto the stage like a rowdy horde while all the sensations he had were multiplying infinitely. Often the rate of these births would peak so intensely that Wells could only bear the pain by taking laudanum, which Jane administered in such large doses that he almost lost consciousness. The worst day of all was September 21, 1866, his own birthday. It seemed as if most of his twins had decided to follow their elder brother’s example after all, and everything that had occurred before then had been no more than a quick rehearsal before the main event. That day, Jane was convinced that the terror would cause her husband’s mind to snap, that his body would be unable to endure the massive doses of laudanum, that he would either die or go insane, and that she would be powerless to prevent it. But Wells’s mind did not snap, and although the agony continued for several months while the stragglers were being born, it gradually became less intense, until the day finally came when everything appeared to be over. After two weeks without a single attack, Wells and Jane concluded that almost all his infinite twins had appeared on their respective stages. However, this apparent hiatus brought no respite, because when Wells managed to sweep away the lingering cobwebs in which the laudanum had shrouded his brain, he realized with horror that everything had changed inexorably, and for the worse.

The familiar harmless background noise no longer echoed in his head. Instead, he was plagued by a constant stream of painfully clear images, of violent sensations he could no longer regard as occasional hallucinations. He would suddenly be invaded by a voracious hunger, an insatiable thirst, or the opposite: a fullness that would make him drowsy, or in the worst case he would vomit uncontrollably. For no reason, an animal fear would grip his insides, or he would be crushed by a terrible, savage loneliness. Faces would sometimes appear out of nowhere and lean over him, smiling grotesquely, or he would feel a humiliating wetness between his buttocks, or be overwhelmed by deep sleep, inconsolable crying, or paroxysms of laughter, which would end up infecting Jane . . . Wells was powerless to stop himself, at any moment, from feeling and seeing everything a baby felt and saw from his cradle, or from his mother’s arms, magnified and repeated ad infinitum. It was as if he had suddenly been locked in a room filled with bats wheeling round and screeching as they tried to escape. This was nothing like the unsettling sense of fragmentation the two of them had experienced when they first landed in this world, or the pleasant, pink dreams of the previous months . . . This was the insanity of looking at oneself in a hall of a thousand mirrors, if you will forgive the oblique reference, dear reader.

Fortunately, their late lamented friend Dodgson, as a timely precaution they only discovered a month after his death, had named them sole heirs to the copyright of all his works “as a just reward for the inspired ideas they gave me during all those unforgettable golden afternoons.” Charles’s reasons for doing this just before he set sail for Europe gave them much food for thought, but regardless of his intentions, the money allowed the Wellses to endure their terrible ordeal safe in the knowledge that they were relatively financially secure. Reduced to a gibbering, incapable, whining wreck, Wells had to give up the teaching post he had secured at an academy in Bromley, the town of his birth, and place himself in the hands of his wife, and it was Dodgson’s bequest that enabled them to keep paying the rent on the cottage they had taken in the nearby village of Sevenoaks. During this period, Jane was everything to Wells: mother, friend, and wife to her husband, and the hand he clung to desperately as he dangled by a thread over the abyss. And they both realized how lucky they were that Jane was six years younger than he and so would not have to suffer that torment until sometime in the future. And thanks to this fortunate circumstance, when it did happen, it was Wells’s hand that held tightly to hers, preventing her from plummeting into the abyss he knew so well. Neither liked to think what would have become of them if they had been forced to go through that hell at the same time.

But even though they knew they had their economic needs covered, and could count on each other, to begin with they thought they would not be able to bear it, that this really was the end, a fitting punishment for having broken the rules of the game. Did they really believe they could challenge the established order without suffering the consequences? They had fled the square the Creator had placed them on before he rolled the dice. And now they were paying the price. That gift for observation, which had made the universe they came from into a unique, indivisible, unambiguous place, a temple of knowledge, was now their Achilles’ heel. Their observational skills didn’t seem to work in the same way in their new theater, and instead of condensing all the possible realities into one, it enabled them to see each and every one of the infinite stages through the eyes of all their twins, with whom they appeared to be closely connected. All of a sudden, whether they wanted to or not, they were all-knowing and all-seeing. And that seemed to them like a fate worse than the one suffered by their own dying universe. A fate from which there was no escape this time.