Snow from a recent storm has dusted the concrete and coated the generators beneath those glassless upper windows.
Even now, flurries blow in off the lake, drifting down like cold confetti.
I wander away from the box, trying to temper my hope.
This could be an abandoned power plant in South Chicago in any number of worlds.
As I move slowly down the row of generators, a glint on the floor catches
my eye.
I approach.
Resting in a crack in the concrete six inches from the base of the generator: an empty ampoule with its neck snapped off. In all the abandoned power plants I’ve passed through during the last month, I’ve never seen this.
Perhaps the one Jason2 injected himself with seconds before I lost consciousness, on the night he stole my life.
—
I hike out of the industrial ghost town.
Hungry, thirsty, exhausted.
The skyline looms to the north, and even though it’s decapitated by the low winter clouds, it’s unmistakably the one I know.
—
I board the northbound Red Line at Eighty-Seventh Street as dusk is falling.
There are no seat belts, no holograms on this El.
Just a slow, rickety ride through South Chicago.
Then the urban sprawl of downtown.
I switch trains.
The Blue Line carries me into the gentrified northern neighborhoods.
Over the last month, I’ve been in Chicagos that looked similar, but there’s something different about this one. It isn’t just that empty ampoule.
It’s something deeper that I can’t explain other than to say it feels like a place where I belong. It feels like mine.
As we cruise past gridlocked rush-hour traffic on the expressway, the
snow intensifies.
I wonder— Is Daniela, my Daniela, alive and well under the snow-laden clouds?
Is my Charlie breathing the air of this world?
—
I exit the train onto the El platform in Logan Square and thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. Snow is sticking to the familiar streets of my neighborhood. To the sidewalks. To the cars parked along the curbs. The headlight beams from rush-hour traffic slash through the profusion of snowflakes.
Up and down my block, the houses stand glowing and lovely in the storm.
A fragile half inch has already collected on the steps to my porch, where a single set of footprints leads to the door.
Through the front window of the brownstone, I see the lights on inside, and from where I stand on the sidewalk, this looks exactly like home.
I keep expecting to discover that some minor detail is off—the wrong front door, the wrong street number, a piece of furniture on the stoop I don’t
recognize.
But the door is right.
The street number is right.
There’s even a tesseract chandelier hanging above the dinner table in the front room, and I’m close enough to see the large photograph on the mantel —Daniela, Charlie, and me at Inspiration Point in Yellowstone National Park.
Through the open doorway that leads from the dining room into the kitchen, I glimpse Jason standing at the island, holding a bottle of wine.
Reaching across, he pours into someone’s wineglass.
Elation hits, but it doesn’t last.
From my vantage point, all I can see is a beautiful hand holding the stem of the glass, and it crashes down on me again what this man did to me.
All that he took.
Everything he stole.
I can’t hear anything out here in the snow, but I see him laugh and take a
sip of wine.
What are they talking about?
When was the last time they fucked?
Is Daniela happier now than she was a month ago, with me?
Can I stand to know the answer to that question?
The sane, even voice in my head is wisely suggesting that I move away from the house right now.
I’m not ready to do this. I have no plan.
Only rage and jealousy.
And I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. I still need more confirmation that this is my world.
A little ways down the block, I see the familiar back end of our Suburban. Walking over, I brush off the snow that’s clinging to the Illinois
tag.
The license plate number is mine.
The paint is the right color.
I clear the back windshield.
The purple Lakemont Lions decal looks perfect, inasmuch as it’s half ripped off. I instantly regretted putting the sticker on the glass the moment I
did it. Tried to tear it off, but only managed to remove the top half of the lion’s face, so all that’s left is a growling mouth.
But that was three years ago.
I need something more recent, more definitive.
Several weeks before I was abducted, I accidentally backed the Suburban into a parking meter near campus. It didn’t do much damage beyond cracking the right rear taillight and denting in the bumper.
I wipe the snow off the red plastic of the taillight and then the bumper.
I touch the crack.
I touch the dent.
No other Suburban in the countless Chicagos I’ve visited has borne these markings.
Rising, I glance across the street toward that bench where I once spent an entire day watching another version of my life unfold. It’s empty at the moment, the snow piling up silently on the seat.
Shit.
A few feet behind the bench, a figure watches me through the snowy darkness.
I begin walking quickly down the sidewalk, thinking it probably looked as if I were stealing the license plate off the Suburban.
I have to be more careful.
—
The blue neon sign in the front window of Village Tap blinks through the storm, like a signal from a lighthouse, telling me I’m close to home.
There is no Hotel Royale in this world, so I check into the sad Days Inn across from my local bar.
Two nights is all I can afford, and it brings my cash reserves down to $120 and change.
The business center is a tiny room down the hallway on the first floor, with a borderline-obsolete desktop, fax machine, and printer.
Online, I confirm three pieces of information.
Jason Dessen is a professor in the Lakemont physics department.
Ryan Holder just won the Pavia award for his research contributions in the field of neuroscience.
Daniela Vargas-Dessen isn’t a renowned Chicago artist, and she doesn’t run a graphic-design business. Her charmingly amateurish website displays several pieces of her best work and advertises her services as an art instructor.
As I trudge up the stairwell to my third-floor room, I finally begin to let
myself believe.
This is my world.
—
I sit by the window of my hotel room, staring down at the blinking neon
sign of Village Tap.
I am not a violent person.
I’ve never hit a man.
Never even tried to.
But if I want my family back, there’s simply no way around it.
I have to do a terrible thing.
Have to do what Jason2 did to me, only without the conscience- protecting option of simply putting him back into the box. Even though I have one ampoule left, I wouldn’t repeat his mistake.
He should’ve killed me when he had the chance.
I feel the physicist side of my brain creeping in, trying to take over the controls.
I’m a scientist, after all. A process-minded thinker.
So I think of this like a lab experiment.
There’s a result I want to achieve.
What are the steps it will take for me to arrive at that result?
First, define the desired result.
Kill the Jason Dessen who’s living in my home and put him in a place where no one will ever find him again.
What tools do I need to accomplish that?
A car.
A gun.
Some method of restraining him.
A shovel.
A safe place to dispose of his body.
I hate these thoughts.
Yes, he took my wife, my son, my life, but the idea of the preparation and the violence is so ugly.
There’s a forest preserve an hour south of Chicago. Kankakee River State Park. I’ve been there several times with Charlie and Daniela, usually in the fall when the leaves are turning and we’re antsy for wilderness and solitude and a day out of the city.
I could drive Jason2 there at night, or make him drive, just like he did to me.
Lead him down one of the trails I know on the north side of the river.
I will have been there a day or two prior, so his grave will already be dug in some quiet, secluded place. I’ll have researched how deep to make it so animals can’t smell the rot. Make him think he’s going to dig his own grave, so he thinks he has more time to figure out an escape or to convince me not to do this. Then, when we’re within twenty feet of the hole, I’ll drop the shovel and say that it’s time to start digging.
As he bends down to pick it up, I’ll do the thing I can’t imagine.
I will fire a bullet into the back of his head.
Then I’ll drag him over to the hole and roll him into it and cover him up with dirt.
The good news is that no one will be looking for him.
I’ll slide back into his life the same way he slid into mine.
Maybe years down the road, I’ll tell Daniela the truth.
Maybe I’ll never tell her.
—
The sporting-goods store is three blocks away and still an hour shy of closing. I used to come in here once a year to buy cleats and balls when Charlie was into soccer during middle school.
Even then, the gun counter always held a fascination for me.
A mystique.
I could never imagine what would drive someone to want to own one.
I’ve only fired a gun two or three times in my life, while I was in high school in Iowa. Even then, shooting at rusted oil drums on my best friend’s farm, I didn’t experience the same thrill as the other kids. It scared me too much. As I would stand facing the target, aiming the heavy pistol, I couldn’t escape the thought that I was holding death.
The store is called Field and Glove, and I’m one of three customers at this late hour.
Wandering past racks of windbreakers and a wall of running shoes, I make my way toward the counter at the back of the store.
Shotguns and rifles hang on the wall over boxes of ammunition.
Handguns gleam under glass at the counter.
Black ones.
Chrome ones.
Ones with cylinders.
Ones without.
Ones that look like they should only be carried by vigilante cops in 1970s action movies.
A woman walks over wearing a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans. She’s got a distinct Annie Oakley vibe with her frizzy red hair and a tattoo that wraps around her freckled right arm and reads: …the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
“Help you with something?” she asks.
“Yeah, I was looking to buy a handgun, but to be honest, I don’t know
the first thing about them.”
“Why do you want one?”
“Home defense.”
She pulls a set of keys out of her pocket and unlocks the cabinet I’m standing in front of. I watch her arm reach under the glass and lift out a black pistol.
“So this is a Glock 23. Forty caliber. Austrian-made. Solid knockdown power. I could also set you up in a subcompact version if you wanted
something smaller for a concealed-carry permit.”
“And this will stop an intruder?”
“Oh yeah. This’ll put ’em down, and they won’t be getting back up.”
She pulls the slide, checks to make sure the tube is clear, and then locks it
back and ejects the magazine.
“How many bullets does it hold?”
“Thirteen rounds.”
She offers me the gun.
I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do with it. Aim it? Feel the weight?
I hold it awkwardly in my hand, and even though it isn’t loaded, I register that same I’m-holding-death unease.
The price tag hanging from the trigger guard reads $599.99.
I need to figure out my money situation. I could probably walk into the bank and tap Charlie’s savings account. It had a balance of around $4,000 the last time I looked. Charlie never accesses that account. No one does. If I withdrew a couple thousand dollars, I doubt it would be missed. At least, not right away. Of course, I’d need to somehow get my hands on a driver’s
license first.
“What do you think of it?” she asks.
“Yeah. I mean, it feels like a gun.”
“I could show you a few others. I have a really nice Smith and Wesson .357 if you were thinking more along the lines of a revolver.”
“No, this would do fine. I just need to scrape together some cash. What’s
the background-check process?”
“Do you have a FOID card?”
“What’s that?”
“A firearm owners’ identification card that’s issued by the Illinois State
Police. You have to apply for it.”
“How long does that take?”
She doesn’t answer.
Just stares at me strangely, then reaches out and takes the Glock from my hand and returns it to its resting place under the glass.
I ask, “Did I say something wrong?”
“You’re Jason, right?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I’ve been standing here trying to put it all together, to make sure I
wasn’t crazy. You don’t know my name?”
“No.”
“See, I think you’re messing with me, and it’s not a wise—”
“I’ve never spoken to you before. In fact, I haven’t been in this store in probably four years.”
She locks the cabinet and returns the key ring to her pocket.
“I think you should leave now, Jason.”
“I don’t understand—”
“If this isn’t some game, then you have a head injury or Alzheimer’s or
you’re just plain crazy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
She leans her elbows on the counter. “Two days ago, you walked in here, said you wanted to buy a handgun. I showed you the same Glock. You said it was for home defense.”
What does this mean? Is Jason2 generally preparing in case I possibly
return, or is he actually expecting me?
“Did you sell me a gun?” I ask.
“No, you didn’t have a FOID card. You said you needed to get cash. I don’t think you even had a driver’s license.”
Now a prickling sensation trails down my spine.
My knees go weak.
She says, “And it wasn’t just two days ago. I got a weird vibe from you, so yesterday, I asked Gary, who also works the gun counter, if he’d ever seen you in here before. He had. Three other times in the last week. And
now, here you are again.”
I brace myself against the counter.
“So, Jason, I don’t ever want to see you in this store again. Not even to buy a jockstrap. If I do, I’ll call the police. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She looks scared and resolute, and I would not want to cross her in a dark
alley where she took me for a threat.
I say, “I understand.”
“Get out of my store.”
—
I step out into the pouring snow, the flakes blasting my face, my head spinning.
I glance down the street, see a cab approaching. When I raise my arm, it veers toward me, easing to a stop alongside the curb. Pulling open the rear
passenger door, I hop in.
“Where to?” the cabbie asks.
Where to.
Great question.
“A hotel, please.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. Something within ten blocks. Something cheap. I want you to pick it.”
He looks back through the Plexiglas separating the front and backseats.
“You want me to pick it?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, I think he isn’t going to do it. Maybe it’s too weird a request. Maybe he’s going to order me out. But instead, he starts the meter running and pulls back out into traffic.
—
I stare through the window at the snow falling through headlights, taillights, streetlights, flashing lights.
My heart stomping inside my chest, my thoughts racing.
I need to calm down.
Approach this logically, rationally.
The cab pulls over in front of a seedy-looking hotel called the End o’ Days.
The cabbie glances back, asks, “This work for you?”
I pay the fare and head for the front office.
There’s a Bulls game on the radio and a heavy hotel clerk behind the desk eating Chinese food from a fleet of white cartons.
Brushing the snow off my shoulders, I check in under the name of my
mother’s father—Jess McCrae.
I pay for a single night.
It leaves me with $14.76.
I head up to the fourth floor and lock myself inside the room behind the
deadbolt and the chain.
It’s utterly without life.
A bed with a depressing floral-print comforter.
Formica table.
Dressers built of particleboard.
At least it’s warm.
I move to the curtains and peek outside.
It’s snowing hard enough that the streets are beginning to empty and the pavement is frosting over, showing the tire tracks of passing cars.
I undress and stow my last ampoule in the Gideon Bible in the bottom
drawer of the bedside table.
Then I jump in the shower.
I need to think.
—
I ride the elevator down to the first floor and use my keycard to access the
business center.
I have an idea.
Bringing up the free email service I use in this world, I type in the first idea for a username that comes to mind.
My name spelled out in Pig Latin: asonjayessenday.
Not surprisingly, it’s already taken.
The password is obvious.
The one I’ve used for almost everything the last twenty years—the make, model, and year of my first car: jeepwrangler89.
I attempt to log in.
It works.
I find myself in a newly created email account whose inbox contains several introductory emails from the provider and one recent email from “Jason” that has already been opened.
The subject heading: Welcome Home The Real Jason Dessen
I open it.
There’s no message in the email.
Just a hyperlink.
The new page loads and an alert pops up on the screen:
Welcome to UberChat!
There are currently three active participants.
Are you a new user?
I click Yes.
Your username is Jason9.
I have to create a password before logging in.
A large window displays the entire history of a conversation.
A selection of emoticons.
A small field in which to type and send public messages to the board and private messages to individual participants.
I scroll to the top of the conversation, which started approximately eighteen hours ago. The most recent message is forty minutes old.
JasonADMIN: I’ve seen some of you around the house. I know there’s more of you out there.
Jason3: Is this seriously happening?
Jason4: Is this seriously happening?
Jason6: Unreal.
Jason3: So how many of you went to field & glove?
JasonADMIN: Three days ago.
Jason4: Two.
Jason6: I bought one in South Chicago.
Jason5: You have a gun?
Jason6: Yes.
JasonADMIN: Who all thought about Kankakee?
Jason3: Guilty.
Jason4: Guilty.
Jason6: I actually drove out there and dug a hole last night. Was all ready to go. Had a car lined up. Shovel. Rope. Everything planned out perfectly. This evening, I went to the house to wait for the Jason who did this to all of us to leave. But then I saw myself behind the Suburban.
Jason8: Why’d you call it off, jason6?
Jason6: What’s the point of going forward with it? If I got rid of him, one of you would just show up and do the same thing to me.
Jason3: Did everyone run through the game-theory scenarios?
Jason4: Yes.
Jason6: Yes.
Jason8: Yes.
JasonADMIN: Yes.
Jason3: So we all know there’s no way this ends well.
Jason4: You could all just kill yourselves and let me have her.
JasonADMIN: I opened this chat room and have administrator controls. Five more Jasons are lurking right now, just FYI.
Jason3: Why don’t we all join forces and conquer the world? Can you imagine what would happen with this many versions of us actually working together? (Only half-kidding)
Jason6: Can I imagine what would happen? Totally. They’d put us in a government lab and test us until the end of time.
Jason4: Can I just say what we’re all thinking? This is fucking weird.
Jason5: I have a gun too. None of you fought as hard as I did to get home. None of you saw what I saw.
Jason7: You have no idea what the rest of us went through.
Jason5: I saw hell. Literally. Hell. Where are you right now, Jason7?
I’ve already killed two of us.
Another alert flashes across the screen:
You have a private message from Jason7.
I open the message, my head pounding, exploding.
I know this situation is totally insane, but do you want to partner with me? Two minds are stronger than one. We could work together to get rid of the others, and when all the smoke has cleared, I’m sure we can figure something out. Time is critical. What do you say?
What do I say?
I can hardly breathe.
I leave the business center.
Sweat runs down my sides, but I feel so cold.
The first-floor hallway is empty, quiet.
I hurry to the elevator and ride up to the fourth floor.
Stepping off onto the beige carpeting, I move quickly down the hall and lock myself back in my room.
Spiraling.
How did I not anticipate this happening?
In hindsight, it was inevitable.
Though I wasn’t branching into alternate realities in the corridor, I certainly was in every world I stepped into. Which means other versions of me were split off in those worlds of ash and ice and plague.
The infinite nature of the corridor precluded me from running into more versions of myself, but I did see one—the Jason with his back flayed open.
Undoubtedly most of those Jasons were killed or lost forever in other worlds, but some, like me, made the right choices. Or got lucky. Their paths might have altered from mine, through different doors, different worlds, but they eventually found their respective ways back to this Chicago.
We all want the same thing—to get our life back.
Jesus.
Our life.
Our family.
What if most of these other Jasons are exactly like me? Decent men who want back what was taken from them. And if that’s the case, what right do I have to Daniela and Charlie over the rest of them?
This isn’t just a game of chess. It’s a game of chess against myself.
I don’t want to see it this way, but I can’t help it. The other Jasons want the thing in the world that is most precious to me—my family. That makes them my enemy. I ask myself what I would be willing to do to regain my life. Would I kill another version of me if it meant I could spend the rest of my days with Daniela? Would they?
I picture these other versions of me sitting in their lonely hotel rooms, or walking the snowy streets, or watching my brownstone, wrestling with this
exact line of thinking.
Asking themselves these same questions.
Attempting to forecast their doppelgängers’ next moves.
There can be no sharing. It’s strictly competitive, a zero-sum game, where only one of us can win.
If anyone is reckless, if things get out of hand and Daniela or Charlie is injured or killed, then no one wins. That must be why things seemed normal
when I looked inside the front window of my house several hours ago.
No one knows which move to make, so no one has made a play against
Jason2.
It’s a classic setup, pure game theory.
A terrifying spin on the Prisoner’s Dilemma that asks, Is it possible to
outthink yourself?
I’m not safe.
My family isn’t safe.
But what can I do?
If every possible move I think of is doomed to be anticipated or made before I even get a chance, where does that leave me?
I feel like crawling out of my skin.
The worst days in the box—volcanic ash raining down on my face, almost freezing to death, seeing Daniela in a world where she had never said my name—none of it compares to the storm that’s roiling inside of me
in this moment.
I’ve never felt farther from home.
The phone rings, snapping me back into the present.
I walk over to the table, lift the receiver on the third ring.
“Hello?”
No response, only soft breathing.
I hang up the phone.
Move to the window.
Part the curtains.
Four floors below, the street is empty, the snow still pouring down.
The phone rings again, but only once this time.
Weird.
As I ease back down onto the bed, the phone call keeps needling me.
What if another version of me is trying to confirm that I’m in my room?
First, how the hell would he find me at this hotel?
The answer comes fast, and it’s terrifying.
At this very moment, there must be numerous versions of me in Logan Square doing exactly what he’s doing—calling every motel and hotel in my
neighborhood to find other Jasons. It isn’t luck that he found me. It’s a statistical probability. Even a handful of Jasons, making a dozen phone calls each, could cover all the hotels within a few miles of my house.
But would the clerk give out my room number?
Maybe not intentionally, but it’s possible the man downstairs listening to the Bulls game and stuffing his face with Chinese food could be duped.
How would I dupe him?
If it were anyone other than me looking for me, the name I checked in under would probably keep me undetected. But all these other versions know my mother’s father’s name. I screwed that up. If using that name was my first impulse, it would have also been another Jason’s first impulse. So assuming I knew the name I might have checked in under, what would I do next?
The front desk wouldn’t just give out my room number.
I’d have to pretend to know that I was staying here.
I would call the hotel and ask to be connected to Jess McCrae’s room.
When I heard my voice pick up on the other end of the line, I would know I was here and hang up right away.
Then I would call back thirty seconds later and say to the clerk, “Sorry to bother you again, but I just called a second ago and was accidentally disconnected. Could you please reconnect me to…Oh shit, what room number was that?”
And if I got lucky, and the front-desk clerk was an absentminded idiot, there’d be a decent chance he would just blurt out my room number before reconnecting me.
Thus the first call to confirm it was me who answered.
Thus the second, where the caller hung up right after learning which
room I’m staying in.
I rise from the bed.
The thought is absurd, but I can’t ignore it.
Am I coming up here right now to kill me?
I slide my arms into the sleeves of my wool coat and head for the door.
I feel dizzy with fear, even as I second-guess myself, thinking maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m rushing to some outlandish explanation of a mundane
thing—the phone ringing twice in my room.
Perhaps.
But after that chat room, nothing would surprise me.
What if I’m right and don’t listen to my gut?
Go.
Right now.
I slowly open the door.
Step out into the hall.
It’s empty.
Silent save for the low-register hum of the fluorescent lights above me.
Stairs or elevator?
At the far end of the hallway, the elevator dings.
I hear the doors begin to part, and then a man in a wet jacket steps out of
the elevator car.
For a moment, I can’t move.
Can’t tear my eyes away.
It’s me walking toward me.
Our eyes meet.
He isn’t smiling.
Wears no emotion on his face but a chilling intensity.
He raises a gun, and I’m suddenly running in the opposite direction, sprinting down the hallway toward the door at the far end that I’m praying isn’t locked.
I crash through under the glowing Exit sign, glancing back as I enter the
stairwell.
My doppelgänger runs toward me.
Down the steps, my hand sliding along the guardrail to steady my balance, thinking, Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.
As I reach the third-floor landing, I hear the door bang open above me, the echo of his footsteps filling the stairwell.
I keep descending.
Hit the second floor.
Then the first, where one door with a window in the center leads into the lobby and another without a window leads elsewhere.
I choose elsewhere, smashing through…
Into a wall of freezing, snow-filled air.
I stumble down some steps into several inches of fresh powder, my shoes slipping on the frosted pavement.
Just as I right myself, a figure emerges out of the shadows of the alley
between two Dumpsters.
Wearing a coat like mine.
His hair dusted with snow.
It’s me.
The blade in his hand throws a glint of light from the nearby streetlamp, and he advances on me, a knife spearing toward my abdomen—the knife that came standard-issue with the Velocity Laboratories backpack.
I sidestep at the last conceivable moment, grabbing his arm and slinging him with all my power into the steps that lead up to the hotel.
He crashes into the stairs as the door busts open above us, and two seconds before I run for my life, I commit the most impossible image to memory: one version of myself stepping out of the stairwell with a gun, the other version picking himself up off the stairs, his hands frantically searching for his knife, which has disappeared in the snow.
Are they a pair?
Working together to murder every Jason they can find?
I race between the buildings, snow plastering my face, my lungs burning.
Turning out onto the sidewalk of the next street, I look back down the alley, see two shadows moving toward me.
I head through the blowing snow.
No one out.
The streets empty.
Several doors down, I hear an explosion of noise—people cheering.
I rush toward it, pushing through a scuffed, wooden door into a dive bar with standing room only, everyone turned facing the row of flatscreens above the bar, where the Bulls are locked in a fourth-quarter death match with the visiting team.
I force my way into the crowd, letting it swallow me.
There’s nowhere to sit, barely anyplace to stand, but I finally carve out a cramped square foot of legroom underneath a dartboard.
Everyone is glued to the game, but I’m watching the door.
The Bulls’ point guard drains a three-point shot, and the room erupts in a roar of pure joy, strangers high-fiving and embracing.
The door to the bar swings open.
I see myself standing in the threshold, covered in snow.
He takes a step inside.
I lose him for a moment, then see him again as the crowd undulates.
What has this version of Jason Dessen experienced? What worlds did he see? What hell did he fight through to arrive back in this Chicago?
He scans the crowd.
Behind him, I can see the snow falling outside.
His eyes look hard and cold, but I wonder if he would say the same about me.
As his gaze tracks toward where I’m standing in the back of the room, I squat beneath the dartboard, hidden in a forest of legs.
I let a full minute pass.
When the crowd roars again, I slowly stand.
The door to the bar is closed now.
My doppelgänger gone.
—
The Bulls win.
People linger, happy and drunk.
It takes an hour for a spot to open up at the bar, and since I have no place to go, I climb onto a stool and order a light beer that brings my balance down to less than $10.
I’m starving, but this place doesn’t serve food, so I devour several bowls of Chex mix as I nurse my beer.
An inebriated man attempts to engage me in a conversation about the Bulls’ postseason chances, but I just stare down into my beer until he insults me and starts bothering two women standing behind us.
He’s loud, belligerent.
A bouncer appears and hauls him outside.
The crowd thins.
As I sit at the bar, trying to tune out the noise, I keep landing on a single concept: I need to get Daniela and Charlie away from our brownstone on 44 Eleanor Street. As long as they’re home, the threat of these Jasons doing
something crazy persists.
But how?
Jason2 is presumably with them right now.
It’s the middle of the night.
Going anywhere near our house entails way too much risk.
I need Daniela to leave, to come to me.
But for every idea I have, another Jason is having the same, or already
has, or soon will.
There’s no way for me to win.
As the door to the bar swings open, I look over.
A version of me—backpack, peacoat, boots—steps through the doorway, and when our eyes meet, he betrays surprise and raises both arms in a show
of deference.
Good. Maybe he’s not here for me.
If there are as many Jasons running around Logan Square as I suspect, chances are he just stumbled in out of the cold, seeking shelter and safety.
Like I did.
He crosses to the bar and climbs onto the empty stool beside mine, his
bare hands trembling with cold.
Or fear.
The bartender drifts over and looks at both of us with curiosity—as if she wants to ask—but all she says to the new arrival is, “What can I get you?”
“Whatever he’s drinking.”
We watch her pull a pint from the tap and bring over the glass, foam spilling down the sides.
Jason lifts his beer.
I lift mine.
We stare at each other.
He has a fading wound across the right side of his face, like someone slashed him with a knife.
The thread tied around his ring finger is identical to mine.
We drink.
“When did you get—?”
“When did you get—?”
We can’t help but smile.
I say, “This afternoon. You?”
“Yesterday.”
“I have a feeling it’s going to be kind of hard—”
“—not finishing each other’s sentences?”
“You know what I’m thinking right now?”
“I can’t read your mind.”
It’s strange—I’m talking to myself, but his voice doesn’t sound like what I think I sound like.
I say, “I’m wondering how far back you and I branched. Did you see the world of falling ash?”
“Yes. And then the ice. I barely escaped that one.”
“What about Amanda?” I ask.
“We were separated in the storm.”
I feel a pang of loss like a small detonation in my gut.
I say, “We stayed together in mine. Took shelter in a house.”
“The one that was buried to the dormer windows?”
“Exactly.”
“I found that house too. With the dead family inside.”
“So then where—?”
“So then where—?”
“You go,” he says.
As he sips his beer, I ask, “Where did you go after the ice world?”
“I walked out of the box into this guy’s basement. He freaked out. He had a gun, tied me up. Probably would have killed me except he took one of the ampoules and decided to have a look at the corridor for himself.”
“So he went in and never came out.”
“Exactly.”
“And then?”
His eyes go distant for a moment.
He takes another long pull from his beer.
“Then I saw some bad ones. Really bad. Dark worlds. Evil places. What about you?”
I share my story, and though it feels good to unload, it’s undeniably strange to unload on him.
This man and I were the same person up until a month ago. Which means ninety-nine-point-nine percent of our history is shared.
We’ve said the same things. Made identical choices. Experienced the
same fears.
The same love.
As he buys our second round of beers, I can’t take my eyes off him.
I’m sitting next to me.
There’s something about him that doesn’t seem quite real.
Perhaps because I’m watching from an impossible vantage point— looking at myself from outside of myself.
He looks strong, but also tired, damaged, and afraid.
It’s like talking to a friend who knows everything about you, but there’s an added layer of excruciating familiarity. Aside from the last month, there are no secrets between us. He knows every bad thing I’ve done. Every thought I’ve entertained. My weaknesses. My secret fears.
“We call him Jason2,” I say, “which implies that we think of ourselves as Jason1. As the original. But we can’t both be Jason1. And there are others out there who think they’re the original.”
“None of us are.”
“No. We’re pieces of a composite.”
“Facets,” he says. “Some very close to being the same man, like I assume you and I are. Some worlds apart.”
I say, “It makes you think about yourself in a different light, doesn’t it?”
“Makes me wonder, who is the ideal Jason? Does he even exist?”
“All you can do is live the best version of yourself, right?”
“Took the words.”
The bartender announces last call.
I say, “Not many people can say they’ve done this.”
“What? Share a beer with themselves?”
“Yeah.”
He finishes his beer.
I finish mine.
Sliding off his stool, he says, “I’ll leave first.”
“Which way are you heading?”
He hesitates. “North.”
“I’m not going to follow you. Can I expect the same?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t both have them.”
He says, “Who deserves them is the question, and there may be no answer. But if it comes down to you and me, I won’t let you stop me from being with Daniela and Charlie. I won’t like it, but I’ll kill you if it comes to
that.”
“Thanks for the beer, Jason.”
I watch him go.
Wait five minutes.
I’m the last one to leave.
It’s still snowing.
There’s a half foot of fresh powder on the streets, and the snowplows are out.
Stepping down onto the sidewalk, I take a moment to absorb my surroundings.
Several customers from the bar are staggering away, but I see no one else out on the streets.
I don’t know where to go.
I have nowhere to go.
Two valid hotel keycards in my pocket, but it wouldn’t be safe to use either of them. Other Jasons could have easily obtained copies. They could be inside my room at this moment, waiting for me to return.
It dawns on me—my last ampoule is back at that second hotel.
Gone now.
I start walking down the sidewalk.
It’s two in the morning, and I’m running on fumes.
How many other Jasons are wandering these streets at this very moment, facing the same fears, the same questions?
How many have been killed?
How many are out hunting?
I can’t escape the feeling that I’m not safe in Logan Square, even in the middle of the night. Every alley I pass, every shadowy doorway, I’m looking for movement, for someone coming after me.
A half mile brings me to Humboldt Park.
I track through the snow.
Out into a silent field.
I’m beyond tired.
My legs aching.
My stomach rumbling with hunger.
I can’t keep going.
A large evergreen towers in the distance, its branches sagging with snow.
The lowest limbs are four feet off the ground, but they offer some semblance of shelter from the storm.
Close to the trunk, there’s only a dusting of snow, and I brush it away and sit in the dirt against the tree on the leeward side.
It’s so quiet.
I can hear the distant mumble of snowplows moving through the city.
The sky is neon pink from all the lights reflecting off the low clouds.
I draw my coat in close and ball my hands into fists to preserve some core heat.
From where I sit, my view is of an open field, interspersed with trees.
The snow falls through the streetlamps along a distant walking path, making coronas of brilliant flakes near the light.
Nothing moves out there.
It’s cold, but not as bad as it might be if the skies were calm and clear.
I don’t think I’m going to freeze to death.
But I don’t think I’m going to sleep either.
As I shut my eyes, an idea strikes me.
Randomness.
How do you beat an opponent who is inherently wired to predict any and
all moves you might make?
You do something completely random.
Unplanned.
You make a move you haven’t considered, to which you’ve given little or no prior thought.
Maybe it’s a bad move that blows up in your face and costs you the game.
But perhaps it’s a play the other you never saw coming, which gives you an unanticipated strategic advantage.
So how do I apply that line of thinking to my situation?
How do I do something utterly random that defies anticipation?
—
Somehow I sleep.
Wake up shivering to a world of gray and white.
The snow and the wind have stopped, and through the leafless trees I can see pieces of the skyline in the distance, the highest buildings just touching the cloud deck that overhangs the city.
The open field is white and still.
It’s dawn.
The streetlamps wink out.
I sit up, unbelievably stiff.
There’s the faintest dusting of snow on my coat.
My breath plumes in the cold.
Of all the versions of Chicago I’ve seen, none can touch the serenity of this morning.
Where the empty streets keep everything hushed.
Where the sky is white and the ground is white and the buildings and the trees stand starkly against it all.
I think of the seven million people still in bed under the covers or standing at their windows, looking out between the curtains at what the storm left behind.
Something so safe and comforting in the imagining of it.
I struggle onto my feet.
I woke up with a crazy idea.
Something that happened in the bar last night, right before the other Jason showed up, inspired it. It’s nothing I would have ever thought of on my own, which makes me almost trust it.
Heading back across the park, I walk north toward Logan Square.
Toward home.
—
At the first convenience store I come to, I go inside and buy a single Swisher Sweets cigar and a mini BIC lighter. $8.21 remaining.
—
My coat is damp from the snow.
I hang it at the rack by the entrance and make my way down the counter.
This place feels gloriously authentic, as if it’s always been here. The 1950s-era vibe isn’t from the red-vinyl upholstering on the booths and stools or the framed photographs of regulars on the walls down through the decades. It comes, I think, from never changing. The smell of the place is all bacon grease and brewing coffee and the indelible remnants of a time when I would’ve been moving through clouds of cigarette smoke en route to a table.
Aside from a few customers at the counter, I spot two cops in one booth, three nurses just off-shift in another, and an old man in a black suit staring with a kind of bored intensity into his cup of coffee.
I sit at the counter just to be near the heat radiating off the open grill.
An ancient waitress comes over.
I know I must look homeless and strung-out, but she doesn’t let on, doesn’t judge, just takes my order with a worn-out midwestern courtesy.
It feels good to be indoors.
The windows are fogging up.
The cold is leaving my bones.
This all-night diner is only eight blocks from my house, but I’ve never eaten here.
When the coffee arrives, I wrap my dirty fingers around the ceramic mug
and soak in the warmth.
I had to do the math in advance.
All I can afford is this cup of coffee, two eggs, and some toast.
I try to eat slowly, to make it last, but I’m famished.
The waitress takes pity on me and brings more toast at no extra charge.
She’s kind.
It makes me feel even lousier about what’s going to happen.
I check the time on my drug-dealer flip phone, the one I bought to call Daniela in another Chicago. It won’t make calls in this world—I guess minutes aren’t transferable across the multiverse.
8:15 a.m.
Jason2 probably left for work twenty minutes ago in order to catch the train to his 9:30 lecture.
Or maybe he hasn’t left at all. Maybe he’s sick, or staying home today for some reason I’ve not anticipated. That would be a disaster, but it’s too risky for me to go anywhere near my house to confirm that he’s not there.
I pull the $8.21 out of my pocket and set it on the counter.
It just barely covers my breakfast plus a cheap-ass tip.
I take one last sip of coffee.
Then I reach into the patch pocket of my flannel button-down and pull out the cigar and the lighter.
I glance around.
The diner is now packed.
The two cops who were here when I first arrived are gone, but there’s another one sitting in the corner booth at the far end.
My hands shake imperceptibly as I tear open the packaging.
True to its name, the end of the cigar tastes faintly sweet.
It takes me three tries to strike a flame.
I fire the tobacco at the end of the cigar, draw in a mouthful of smoke, and blow a stream toward the back of the short-order cook who’s flipping
hotcakes on the griddle.
For ten seconds, no one notices.
Then the older woman sitting next to me in a cat-hair-covered jacket turns and says, “You can’t do that in here.”
And I respond with something I would never in a million years even dream of saying: “But there’s nothing like a cigar after a meal.”
She looks at me through her plate-glass lenses like I’ve lost my mind.
The waitress walks over holding a carafe of steaming coffee and looking massively disappointed.
Shaking her head, she says with the voice of a scolding mother, “You
know you can’t smoke that in here.”
“But it’s delicious.”
“Do I need to call the manager over?”
I take another puff.
Exhale.
The short-order cook—a wide, muscled guy with ink-covered arms— turns around and glares at me.
I say to the waitress, “That’s a great idea. You should go get the manager right now, because I am not putting this out.”
As the waitress leaves, the old woman sitting beside me, whose meal I’ve ruined, mutters, “What a rude young man.”
And she throws down her fork, climbs off the stool, and heads for the door.
Some of the other customers in my vicinity have begun to take notice.
But I keep smoking, until a rail of a man emerges from the back of the restaurant with the waitress in tow. He wears black jeans and a white oxford with sweat stains down the sides and a solid-color tie whose knot is unraveling.
By the general dishevelment of his appearance, I’m guessing he’s worked all night.
Stopping behind me, he says, “I’m Nick, the manager on duty. You can’t smoke that inside. You’re disturbing the customers.”
I turn slightly in my stool and meet his eyes. He looks tired and annoyed, and I feel like such a jerk putting him through this, but I can’t stop now.
I glance around, all eyes on me now, a hotcake burning on the griddle.
I ask, “Are you all disturbed by my fine cigar?”
Yesses abound.
Someone calls me an asshole.
Movement at the far end of the diner catches my eye.
Finally.
The police officer slides out of the corner booth, and as he heads my way down the length of the aisle, I hear his radio crackle.
He’s young.
Late twenties if I had to guess.
Short and stocky.
A Marine-like hardness in his eyes and an intelligence too.
The manager takes a step back, relieved.
Now the officer stands beside me, says, “We have a clean indoor air ordinance in the city, which you’re violating right now.”
I take another puff from the cigar.
The cop says, “Look, I’ve been up most of the night. A lot of these other customers have as well. Why do you want to ruin everyone’s breakfast?”
“Why do you want to ruin my cigar?”
A flicker of anger passes over the cop’s face.
His pupils dilate.
“Put that cigar out right now. Last warning.”
“Or what?”
He sighs.
“That was not the response I was hoping for. Get up.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to jail. If that cigar isn’t out in five seconds, I’m going to assume you’re resisting arrest, which means I get to be a lot less gentle.”
I drop my cigar in my coffee cup, and as I step down off the stool, the officer deftly whips the handcuffs off his belt and locks the bracelets around my wrists.
“Carrying any weapons or needles? Anything that could hurt me or that I
should know about?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you on any drugs or medication right now?”
“No, sir.”
He pats me down, then takes me by the arm.
As we walk toward the entrance, the other customers applaud.
His cruiser is parked right out front.
He opens the rear door and tells me to watch my head.
It’s almost impossible to gracefully duck into the back of a police car with your hands cuffed behind you. The officer climbs in behind the wheel.
Buckling his seat belt, he cranks the engine and pulls out into the snowy street.
The backseat seems to have been constructed especially for discomfort.
There’s no legroom whatsoever, my knees are crushed into the cage, and the seats themselves are made of a hard plastic composite that feels like I’m sitting on concrete.
As I stare through the bars that protect the window, I watch the familiar buildings of my neighborhood scroll past, wondering if this has any hope in hell of working.
—
We pull into the parking garage of the 14th District Police Station.
Officer Hammond hauls me out of the backseat and escorts me through a pair of steel doors into a booking room.
There’s a row of desks, with chairs for prisoners on one side and a Plexiglas partition that separates them from a workstation on the other.
The room smells like vomit and desperation badly covered over with Lysol.
At this hour of the morning, there’s only one other prisoner aside from me—a woman at the far end of the room, chained to a desk. She’s rocking manically back and forth, scratching herself, tweaking.
Hammond searches me again, and then tells me to have a seat.
He unlocks the bracelet on my left wrist, cuffs it to an eyebolt in the desk, and says, “I need to see your driver’s license.”
“I lost it.”
He makes a note of this on his paperwork and then goes around to the other side of the desk and logs in to the computer.
He takes my name.
Social Security number.
Address.
Employer.
I ask, “What exactly am I being charged with?”
“Disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.”
Hammond begins to fill out the arrest report.
After a few minutes, he stops typing and looks at me through the scratched-up Plexi. “You don’t strike me as a crazy person or an asshole.
You don’t have a sheet. You’ve never been in trouble before. So what happened back there? It’s almost like…you were trying to get arrested.
Anything you want to tell me?”
“No. I am sorry I messed up your breakfast.”
He shrugs. “There’ll be others.”
I’m fingerprinted.
Photographed.
They take my shoes and give me a pair of slippers and a blanket.
When he’s finished booking me into the system, I ask, “When do I get my phone call?”
“You can have it right now.” He lifts the receiver from a landline. “Who
would you like to call?”
“My wife.”
I give him the number and watch him dial.
When it starts to ring, he hands me the receiver across the partition.
My heart is pounding.
Pick up, honey. Come on.
Voicemail.
I hear my voice, but it’s not my message. Did Jason2 rerecord it as a subtle marking of his territory?
I say to Officer Hammond, “She’s not answering. Would you hang up, please?”
He kills the call a second before the beep.
“Daniela probably didn’t recognize the number. Would you mind trying
one more time?”
He dials again.
It rings again.
I’m wondering—if she doesn’t answer, should I risk just leaving a
message?
No.
What if Jason2 heard it? If she doesn’t answer this time, I’ll have to
figure out some other way to— “Hello?”
“Daniela.”
“Jason?”
Tears sting my eyes at the sound of her voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Where are you calling from? It says Chicago Police on the caller ID. I thought it was one of those fraternal order charity things, so I didn’t—”
“I just need you to listen for a minute.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Something happened on my way to work. I’ll explain everything when
—”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but I’m in jail.”
For a moment, it gets so quiet on the other end of the line that I can hear the NPR show she’s listening to in the background.
She says finally, “You got arrested?”
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“I need you to come bail me out.”
“Jesus. What did you do?”
“Look, I don’t have all the time in the world right now to explain. This is
kind of like my one phone call.”
“Should I call a lawyer?”
“No, just get down here as soon as you can. I’m at the Fourteenth District Precinct on…” I look to Hammond for the street address.
“North California Avenue.”
“North California. And bring your checkbook. Has Charlie already left
for school?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to pick him up and bring him with you when you come to get
me. This is very—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Daniela—”
“I am not bringing my son to get his father out of jail. What the hell happened, Jason?”
Officer Hammond raps his knuckles on the Plexiglas and moves a finger across his throat.
I say, “My time’s up. Please get here as soon as you can.”
“Okay.”
“Honey.”
“What?”
“I love you so much.”
She hangs up.
—
My lonely holding cell consists of a paper-thin mattress on a concrete base.
Toilet.
Sink.
Camera over the door, watching me.
I lie in bed with the jail-issue blanket draped over me and stare at a patch of ceiling that I’m guessing has been studied by all manner of people in the throes of despair and hopelessness and poor decision-making.
What runs through my mind are the innumerable things that might go wrong, that could so easily stop Daniela from coming to me.
She could call Jason2 on his cell phone.
He could call her between classes just to say hi.
One of the other Jasons could decide to make his move.
If any one of those things happens, this entire plan will blow up
spectacularly in my face.
My stomach hurts.
My heart is racing.
I try to calm myself down, but there’s no stopping the fear.
I wonder if any of my doppelgängers have anticipated this move. I try to take comfort in the idea that they couldn’t have. If I hadn’t seen that belligerent drunk at the bar last night, obnoxiously hitting on those women and getting thrown out by the bouncer, it would never have occurred to me to get myself arrested as a ploy to make Daniela and Charlie come to me in a safe environment.
What led to this decision was a unique experience that was mine alone.
Then again, I could be wrong.
I could be wrong about everything.
I get up, pace back and forth between the toilet and the bed, but there’s not much ground to cover in this six-by-eight-foot cell, and the more I pace, the more the walls seem to inch in closer until I can actually feel the claustrophobia of this room as a tightening in my chest.
It’s getting harder to breathe.
I move finally to the tiny window at eye level in the door.
Peer through into a sterile white hallway.
The sound of a woman crying in one of the neighboring cells echoes off the cinder-block walls.
She sounds so far beyond hope.
I wonder if it’s the same woman I saw in the booking room when I first arrived.
A guard walks by, holding another inmate by his arm above the elbow.
Returning to the bed, I curl up under the blanket and face the wall and try
not to think, but it’s impossible.
It feels like hours have passed.
Why could it possibly be taking this long?
I can only think of one explanation.
Something happened.
She isn’t coming.
—
The door to my cell unlocks with a mechanized jolt that spikes my heart
rate.
I sit up.
The baby-faced guard standing in the doorway says, “You get to go home, Mr. Dessen. Your wife just posted bail.”
—
He leads me back to the booking room, where I sign some papers I don’t even bother to read.
They return my shoes and escort me through a series of corridors.
As I push through the doors at the end of the last hallway, my breath catches in my throat and my eyes sheet over with tears.
Of all the places I imagined our reunion finally happening, the lobby of the 14th District Precinct wasn’t one of them.
Daniela rises from her chair.
Not a Daniela who doesn’t know me, or is married to another man, or
another version of me.
My Daniela.
The one, the only.
She’s wearing the shirt she sometimes paints in—a faded blue button- down spattered with oil and acrylic—and when she sees me her face screws up with confusion and disbelief.
I rush to her across the lobby, wrapping my arms around her, and she’s saying my name, saying it like something isn’t adding up, but I don’t let go, because I can’t let go. Thinking—the worlds I’ve come through, the things I’ve done, endured, suffered, to get back into the arms of this woman.
I can’t believe how good it feels to touch her.
To breathe the same air.
To smell her.
Feel the voltage of my skin against hers.
I frame her face in my hands.
I kiss her mouth.
Those lips—so maddeningly soft.
But she pulls away.
And then pushes me away, her hands against my chest, her brow deeply furrowed.
“They told me you were arrested for smoking a cigar in a restaurant, and that you wouldn’t…” Her train of thought derails. She studies my face like there’s something wrong with it, her fingers running through two weeks’ worth of stubble. Of course there’s something wrong with it—it’s not the face she woke up to today. “You didn’t have a beard this morning, Jason.”
She looks me up and down. “You’re so thin.” She touches my ragged, filthy shirt. “These aren’t the clothes you left the house in.”
I can see her trying to process it all and coming up blank.
“Did you bring Charlie?” I ask.
“No. I told you I wasn’t going to. Am I losing my mind or—?”
“You’re not losing your mind.”
Gently, I take her by the arm and pull her over to a couple of straight-
backed chairs in a small waiting area.
I say, “Let’s sit for a minute.”
“I don’t want to sit, I want you to—”
“Please, Daniela.”
We sit.
“Do you trust me?” I ask.
“I don’t know. This is all…scaring me.”
“I’ll explain everything, but first I need you to call a cab.”
“My car is parked two blocks—”
“We’re not walking to your car.”
“Why?”
“It’s not safe out there for us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Daniela, will you please just trust me on this?”
I think she’s going to balk, but instead she takes out her phone, opens an app, and orders a car.
Looking up at me finally, she says, “Done. It’s three minutes out.”
I glance around the lobby.
The officer who escorted me here from the booking room is gone, and at the moment, we’re the only occupants aside from the woman at the welcome window. But she’s sitting behind a thick wall of protective glass, so I feel reasonably sure she can’t hear us.
I look at Daniela.
I say, “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t. Remember the night of Ryan’s celebration at Village Tap? For winning that prize?”
“Yeah. That was over a month ago.”
“When I walked out the door of our house that night, that’s the last time I saw you, until five minutes ago when I came through those doors.”
“Jason, I’ve seen you every day since that night.”
“That man isn’t me.”
Her face becomes dark.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s another version of me.”
She just stares into my eyes, blinking.
“Is this some kind of trick? Or a game you’re playing? Because—”
“Not a trick. Not a game.”
I take her phone out of her hand and check the time. “It’s 12:18. I have office hours right now.”
I type in the number to my direct line on campus and hand Daniela the phone.
It rings twice, and then I hear my voice answer with, “Hi, beautiful. I was
just thinking about you.”
Daniela’s mouth opens slowly.
She looks ill.
I put it on speaker and mouth, “Say something.”
She says, “Hey. How’s your day going so far?”
“Great. Finished my morning lecture, and now I’m seeing a few students over the lunch hour. Everything okay?”
“Um, yeah. I just…wanted to hear your voice.”
I grab the phone from her and mute it.
Jason says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I look at Daniela, say, “Tell him you’ve been thinking, and that since we had such an amazing time in the Keys last Christmas, you want to go back.”
“We didn’t go to the Keys last Christmas.”
“I know that, but he doesn’t. I want to prove to you he’s not the man you think he is.”
My doppelgänger says, “Daniela? Did I lose you?”
She unmutes the phone. “No, I’m right here. So, the real reason for my call—”
“Wasn’t just to hear the dulcet tones of my voice?”
“I was thinking about when we went to the Keys for Christmas last year, and how much fun we all had. I know money’s tight, but what if we went
back?”
Jason doesn’t miss a beat.
“Absolutely. Whatever you want, my love.”
Daniela stares into my eyes as she says into the phone, “Do you think we can get the same house we had? The pink-and-white one that was right on the beach? It was so perfect.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and I think she’s right on the verge of losing her composure, but she somehow manages to hold the scaffolding
together.
“We’ll make it work,” he says.
The phone begins to shake in her hand.
I want to tear him slowly apart.
Jason says, “Honey, someone’s waiting out in the hall to see me, so I
better jump off.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
No you won’t.
“See you tonight, Jason.”
She ends the call.
Reaching down, I squeeze her hand and say, “Look at me.”
She looks lost, addled.
I say, “I know your head is spinning right now.”
“How can you be at Lakemont and also sitting here right in front of me at
the same moment?”
Her phone beeps.
A message appears on the touchscreen, advising that our car is arriving.
I say, “I’ll explain everything, but right now we need to get in this car
and pick our son up from school.”
“Is Charlie in danger?”
“We all are.”
That seems to wrench her back into the moment.
Rising, I give her a hand up out of the chair.
We move across the lobby toward the precinct entrance.
A black Escalade is parked at the curb, twenty feet ahead.
Pushing through the doors, I pull Daniela along the sidewalk toward the idling SUV.
There’s no trace of last night’s storm, at least not in the sky. A fierce north wind has raked away the clouds and left in its wake a brilliant winter day.
I open the rear passenger door and climb in after Daniela, who gives the black-suited driver the address to Charlie’s school.
“Please get there as quickly as you can,” she says.
The windows are deeply tinted, and as we accelerate away from the precinct, I look over at Daniela and say, “You should text Charlie, let him know we’re coming, to be ready.”
She turns her phone over, but her hands are still shaking too badly to
compose a text.
“Here, let me.”
I take her phone and open the messaging app, find the last thread
between her and Charlie.
I type:
Dad and I are coming to pick you up from school right now. There’s no time to sign you out, so you’ll just have to excuse yourself to the bathroom and head out front. We’ll be in the black Escalade. See you in 10.
Our driver pulls out of the parking lot and into a street that’s been plowed clean of snow, the pavement drying out under the bright winter sun.
A couple blocks down, we pass Daniela’s navy Honda.
Two cars ahead of hers, I see a man who looks exactly like me sitting
behind the wheel of a white van.
I glance through the rear window.
There’s a car behind us, but it’s too far back for me to see who’s driving.
“What is it?” Daniela asks.
“I want to make sure no one’s following us.”
“Who would be following us?”
Her phone vibrates as a new text arrives, saving me from having to answer that question.
CHARLIE now Everything ok?
I respond with:
All good. Explain when we see you.
Putting my arm around Daniela, I pull her in close.
She says, “I feel like I’m caught in a nightmare and I can’t wake myself up. What’s happening?”
“We’ll go someplace safe,” I whisper. “Where we can talk in private.
Then I’ll tell you and Charlie everything.”
—
Charlie’s school is a sprawling brick complex that looks like a mental institution crossed with a steampunk castle.
He’s sitting out on the front steps when we pull into the pickup lane, looking at his phone.
I tell Daniela to wait, and then I step out of the car and walk toward my
son.
He stands, bewildered at my approach.
At my appearance.
I crash into him and squeeze him tight and say, “God, I’ve missed you,” before I even think to stop myself.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. “What’s with the car?”
“Come on, we have to go.”
“Where?”
But I just grab hold of his arm and pull him toward the open passenger door of the Escalade.
He climbs in first and I follow, shutting the door after us.
The driver glances back and asks with a heavy Russian accent, “Where to now?”
I thought about it on the drive over from the police station—someplace big and bustling, where even if one of the other Jasons followed us, we could easily blend into a crowd. Now I second-guess that choice. I think of three alternates—Lincoln Park Conservatory, the observation deck of the Willis Tower, and the Rosehill Cemetery. Rosehill feels like the safest option, the most unexpected. And I’m similarly drawn to Willis and Lincoln Park. So I go against my instinct and swing back to my first choice.
I tell him, “Water Tower Place.”
We ride in silence into the city.
As the buildings of downtown edge closer, Daniela’s cell phone vibrates.
She looks at the screen and then hands it over so I can see the text she just received.
It’s a 773 number I don’t recognize.
Daniela, it’s Jason. I’m texting you from a strange number, but I’ll explain everything when I see you. You’re in danger. You and Charlie both. Where are you? Please call me back ASAP. I love you so much.
Daniela looks scared out of her mind.
The air inside the car is prickling with electricity.
Our driver turns onto Michigan Avenue, which is clogged with lunch- hour traffic.
The yellowed limestone of the Chicago Water Tower looms in the distance, dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers that line the expansive avenue of the Magnificent Mile.
The Escalade pulls to a stop at the main entrance, but I ask the driver to drop us underground instead.
From Chestnut Street, we descend into the darkness of a parking garage.
Four levels down, I tell him to stop at the next bank of elevators.
As far as I can see, no other cars have followed us in.
Our door slams echo off the concrete walls and columns as the SUV pulls away.
Water Tower Place is a vertical mall, with eight floors of boutique and luxury stores built around a chrome-and-glass atrium.
We ride up to the mezzanine level, which houses all the restaurants, and step off the glass elevator.
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 doppelgänger 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?”
“This morning, when you got yourself arrested—was that to get me to
come to you?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why not just come to the house after…Jesus, I don’t even know what to call him.”
“Jason2.”
“After Jason2 left?”
I say, “Here’s where things get really crazy.”
Charlie asks, “Things aren’t already crazy?”
“I wasn’t the only…” It sounds insane to even be saying the words.
But I have to tell them.
“What?” Daniela asks.
“I wasn’t the only version of me to make it back into this world.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“Other Jasons made it back as well.”
“What other Jasons?”
“Versions of me who escaped into the box in that lab, but took different
paths through the multiverse.”
“How many?” Charlie asks.
“I don’t know. A lot, maybe.”
I explain what happened at the sporting-goods store and in the chat room.
I tell them about the Jason who tracked me to my room and the one who attacked me with a knife.
My family’s confusion takes a turn toward outright fear.
I say, “This is why I got myself arrested. For all I know, many Jasons have been watching you, following you, tracking your every move as they try to figure out what to do. I needed you to come to me in a safe place.
That’s why I had you call the car service. I know at least one version of me followed you to the police station. I saw him as we drove past your Honda.
This is why I wanted you to bring Charlie with you. But it doesn’t matter.
We’re here together, and safe, and now you both know the truth.”
It takes Daniela a moment to find her voice.
She says softly, “These other…Jasons…what are they like?”
“What are you asking?”
“Do they all share your history? Are they basically you?”
“Yes. Up until the moment I stepped into the multiverse. Then we all took different paths, had different experiences.”
“But some are just like you? Versions of my husband who have fought like hell to get back to this world. Who want nothing more than to be with
me again. With Charlie.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrow.
What must this be like for her?
I can see her trying to wrap her mind around the impossibility of it all.
“Dani, look at me.”
I stare into her shimmering eyes.
I say, “I love you.”
“I love you too. But so do the others, right? Just as much as you do.”
It rips my guts out to hear those words.
I have no response to them.
I look up at the people in our immediate vicinity, wondering if we’re being watched.
The mezzanine level has become more crowded since we sat.
I see a woman pushing a stroller.
Young lovers meandering slowly through the mall, holding hands and ice-cream cones, lost in their bliss.
An old man shuffling along behind his wife, with a look on his face that
says, Take me home, please.
We’re not safe here.
We’re not safe anywhere in this city.
I ask, “Are you with me?”
She hesitates, looks at Charlie.
Then back at me.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m with you.”
“Good.”
“So what do we do now?”
