Infinite(11)

“I really don’t think you’re crazy, Dylan.”

“Then what’s the explanation? I’m obviously having hallucinations, but they don’t feel like hallucinations. I’ve seen myself. Twice. Looking as flesh-and-blood real as you are right now. This other Dylan interacted with me. He saw me, gave me this strange stare, as if he wasn’t surprised to see me. How is that possible?”

Alicia took my hand. Her skin had an antiseptic smell. “The first time this happened was at the river, right? When you were in the midst of a horrific, stressful event that no human being should ever experience? Nearly drowning and losing the love of your life?”

I nodded.

“The second time was at the museum today? And ‘you’ were wearing a leather jacket that doesn’t exist anymore—the jacket your father was wearing when he murdered your mother? In other words, another horrific, stressful event in your life that no human being should ever experience?”

I nodded again.

Alicia looked at me as if I were a child. “Do I really need to explain this to you, Dylan?”

“Okay, it’s a mental breakdown. I get it. Of course I do. Grief, loss, stress, shock. My mind is misfiring.”

“Exactly.”

“But why a manifestation like this? Why am I seeing other versions of myself?”

“That I can’t tell you. The brain reacts to trauma in unusual ways.”

I thought about the poster of Dr. Eve Brier in the ballroom at the hotel. She was a stranger to me, but I could still picture her face in my memory with unusual clarity. “Well, there’s a speaker at the LaSalle Plaza tonight who believes that we’re living in the midst of infinite parallel universes. So I guess there must be a lot of other Dylan Morans out there. Maybe they’re paying me a visit.”

“Are you talking about the Many Worlds theory?” Alicia asked.

I chuckled in surprise. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course. Most scientists have.”

“Is it legit?”

Alicia shrugged. “Many physicists believe it is.”

“Parallel universes? How the hell does that work?”

“Well, this isn’t my field, but as I understand it, the math of quantum mechanics creates a strange paradox. According to the math, particles have the ability to exist in two different states at the same time. However, whenever we look, we only see one state. That’s the problem.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “This is about Schr?dinger’s cat.”

“I’m impressed, Dylan,” she replied with a smile.

“Hey, I watched The Big Bang Theory.”

“And you’re correct. Erwin Schr?dinger used the story of the cat to explain the paradox. There’s a cat in a box with a vial of poison that may or may not be released depending on whether a single atom decays. Until an observer opens the box to check, quantum theory suggests that the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Except we all know that’s absurd. Well, a Princeton scientist named Hugh Everett came up with an answer: when the box is opened, the universes split. One observer sees a cat that is alive, and in a parallel universe, another identical observer sees a cat that is dead. That’s the Many Worlds theory.”

“That sounds insane,” I said.

“Not according to the math of quantum mechanics. And the math is pretty solid. That’s why we have things like the atomic bomb.”

I shook my head. “Well, I’m not a cat in a box, so what do I do? I’ve lost everything, and now I can’t even trust my own mind.”

“Try not to obsess about it,” Alicia suggested. “I can’t really explain why this is happening to you, but I suspect the hallucinations will go away as you deal with your grief.”

I wanted to believe her, but I kept seeing my doppelg?nger in the museum. His face. My face. The way he looked at me. “You know what really scared me about that other Dylan?”

“What?”

“It was what I saw in his eyes. I felt this cloud of menace from him. He was capable of anything. And he was me.”

“Dylan, he’s not you. He’s not real.”

“Is that the way I look to other people? Dangerous?”

“No. Not at all.”

“The sheriff called me a violent man,” I pointed out.

“Well, you’re not.”

I picked up the photograph of her son from her desk again. “Are you sure about that? Be honest with me, Alicia. We both know I’m the reason that Roscoe’s dead.”



I’d finally sobered up.

With my bail paid, it was four in the morning, and Roscoe was driving me to his mother’s clinic, where Alicia was waiting to take x-rays and give me something for the pain. I was sure Roscoe had been asleep when I called. I knew he’d already had a long day, because there had been another shooting near his parish. There was always another shooting in Chicago. But he told me not to worry; he would be there for me. And he was.

I hadn’t said much on the drive. Roscoe didn’t push me to talk, not at first. We cruised through the green lights on Montrose, and fall leaves blew in the air and slapped across the windshield. The car was warm and quiet on a cool October night. Roscoe wore his white priest’s collar, which fit loosely on his skinny neck. He always wore the collar when he talked to the police. He said they didn’t like to argue with a priest.