Eddie woke up on the living room sofa, and for a long sweet moment he thought he’d fallen asleep on Sunday afternoon playing a video game or watching the Reds on TV. He stretched and his ribs hurt, and then he saw two Trevors sleeping on the floor, which for a second was horrifying, and not just because it was Trevor.
By the time Eddie kicked one of the Rosas out of the bathroom—he didn’t know which one, but she scooted by in a towel—Trevor was coming down the hall.
“Hey,” Trevor called. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“I gotta shower.”
“Yeah. Um.” Trevor looked around. “I have a multiple worlds’ etiquette question.”
“Etiquette? Oh, then I’m your guy,” Eddie said.
“I want to make sure my butt’s not getting infected.”
Eddie shut his eyes and turned his head.
“What? It could be. The fence didn’t necessarily cauterize it.”
“It wasn’t even a burn, Trev.”
“I thought I could ask him to look at it. You know, since it’s me. That would be okay, right?”
“Um …”
“Except I’m not sure I want him looking. I think he might be gay.”
Eddie stared at him. “Um, Trev?” He just had no idea where to go with that, so he palmed Trevor’s skull like a ball, turned him around, and then walked into the bathroom. There were some things Eddie didn’t deal with before a shower.
By the time he got down to the kitchen, Grandma was cooking again and it smelled like buttered heaven.
“My grandma didn’t have that shirt,” he said.
She looked down at her navy polka dots. “There’s bound to be some differences,” she said. “I probably have a little more money here than I did there.” He nodded, and thought about the new linoleum by the back door.
Her Eddie came in and his face looked a little lumpy and bruised, but mostly they’d gone for body punches. Eddie stood and extended a fist.
“My ribs feel like hell. Nice job.”
Eddie2 grinned and bumped his knuckles. “Likewise.”
“I can’t believe you beat each other up,” Trevor2 said.
Both Eddies shrugged. “I do it all the time,” Eddie said, “one way or another.”
“Eleanor,” Reg said. “I’d really like to hear about extradimensional travel.”
“Sorry,” Grandma said. “Telling you would probably violate some basic principle of independent development of multiple Earths.”
“Says who?” said Reg.
“Captain Kirk?” Grandma said. Eddie snorted.
“We could use the help,” Reg said. “Our NASA buys used parts off eBay because some of our equipment is so outdated, we can’t find new ones.”
She stared at him, and he held his fingers up like a Boy Scout. “Wow,” Grandma said. She set a tray of blintzes on the table, hot and crackly with butter, their creamy filling oozing out. She looked at it and said, “My god, no wonder I had a stroke.”
Eddie grinned at her, but across from him, her Eddie stared at his hands, and Eddie finally knew what Eddie2 had to fight about. Eddie was this guy’s future—solo Eddie. Expanding-universe Eddie. Two-degrees-above-absolute-zero Eddie. Eddie2 couldn’t punch the future, but he could sure hit him.
“About that spacecraft,” Reg said.
“My memorial,” Grandma said. “My rules.”
They tucked into the food. Trevor scooped some blueberries onto his blintz. “Blueberries are great for the brain,” he said.
“Don’t stop yet,” Eddie said, grabbing the spoon and shoveling more berries onto Trevor’s plate.
“Ha-ha,” Trevor said.
“So,” Grandma said. “Tell stories about how great I am.”
The Eddies exchanged a glance.
“Um, when I was six you mechanized my skateboard so I could get away from the bully down the block,” her Eddie said. Grandma beamed.
“When I was a sophomore I got in trouble at school,” Eddie said. Eddie2 looked curious. Apparently it hadn’t happened to him. Not all their experiences were identical. “Some guys on the basketball team picked up the principal’s car and moved it into the middle of the street so he’d get towed.”
“Did you get suspended?” Rosa said, a tiny worry line creasing her forehead.
Eddie blew air out sharply. “It’s Indiana. No, they did not suspend the basketball team.” Her Eddie grinned. “And the thing is—I wasn’t even one of them. But because of my dad, the principal assumed I was in on everything.”
Grandma gave him a searching look.
“Afterward my grandma had to meet with him, and he was so condescending.”
“Mr. Delacorte?” Grandma said. “Never did like him. He was rude to me?”
“Oh yeah. He all but patted you on the head.”
Grandma stabbed her blintz.
“He kept referring to you as being older and having trouble keeping up with a kid. He made it sound like he was being understanding, but he was being a jerk.”
“Tell me I got him,” Grandma said.
“There was a game that Friday. Only one you ever missed. While we were on court in full view of the whole town, somebody disassembled Mr. Delacorte’s car and reassembled it in the corridor outside his office.”
Rosa gasped.
“And the doors were too narrow for him to drive it back out, right?” their Trevor said.
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie said, grinning.
“But the security cameras …,” Rosa said.
“Rural Indiana.”
“Oh.”
“Ha!” Grandma said. “I checked the floor first for structural integrity, right? So I didn’t damage the school?”
“I’m sure you did,” Eddie said. “You’re not irresponsible.”
She smiled with satisfaction.
They told stories and ate melt-in-your-mouth blintzes and drank orange juice. Reg2 had tramped into the fields that morning and picked wildflowers. They were in a Mason jar on the table, adding to the sweet mix of scents. It’s so right, Eddie thought, sitting there stuffing his face and telling stories. And it will have to end. It always did, because the universe bears everything away, faster than the speed of light.
“It’s hard to believe all this is real,” Rosa2 said, looking at her counterpart. “That I am.”
“You are completely real, aren’t you?” her Eddie asked.
Eddie shrugged. “Is anybody?”
Eddie2 pressed on. “We didn’t have exactly the same experiences.”
“That makes sense,” Reg said, “as many variables as we’re talking about. As many potential interactions.”
“Maybe it’s a psychosocial version of conservation of parity,” Grandma said.
“Conservation of parity?” Trevor2 said.
“If the universe were perfectly symmetrical, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were watching things in a mirror or watching the events themselves. There’d be no way to know.”
“You’d know you weren’t near a mirror because Rosa takes so long in the bathroom,” Trevor said. “Not much chance you’re the one looking in it.”
Both Rosas rolled their eyes at him.
“Things are a little lopsided,” Grandma said. “Maybe it’s so we can make distinctions.” She shrugged. “It’s the little imperfections that let you know you’re real, and not a reflection.”
And then it just came out. “I disobeyed a cop in a simulation,” Eddie said. Her Eddie snapped his head up. “I don’t think it was resisting arrest, but I’m not sure.”
Eddie locked eyes with her grandson. His were serious and blue, and Eddie could have been looking in a mirror. Maybe he was.
“Reg,” Grandma barked, “is there a reason you subjected my grandson to this?”
Reg shifted in his seat and wiped his mouth. “Um, someone broke into the personnel office and photocopied their psych profiles. I used Eddie to flush out the kid I thought had done it.”
“I was in the simulation, too,” Rosa said. “Eddie was just trying to save some people.”
Grandma shot Reg a look and then stood to refill the juice pitcher. When she sat back down, she said, “Are you familiar with trolleyology?”
They looked around the table, confirming their mutual ignorance.
“It’s a concept in ethics,” Grandma said. “There are different scenarios, but essentially you see a runaway trolley about to smash some people on the track. You could switch it to another line, but there’s one person on that track. If you let the trolley proceed, five people die. If you send it another direction, only one person will die—but you’ll have deliberately killed him, because he was in no danger at all from the trolley. His death is totally on you.” Grandma lifted another blintz onto her plate. “Do you pull the switch lever?”
“You’d save five people,” Trevor said.
“And kill one,” Trevor2 said. “Imagine explaining it to his kids.”
“There’s a variation to the trolley scenarios,” Grandma said. “Say you’re on a bridge above some railroad tracks, and a train is coming. Its brakes are out …”
“Of course,” Rosa said.
“And there are people on the tracks. They can’t get off …”
“Why not?” Reg said.
“A guy with a handlebar mustache tied them to it,” Grandma said, exasperated. “Okay?”
Reg inclined his head.
“The only way to stop the train and save them is to throw something heavy enough onto the tracks in front of the train.”
“That would stop the train so suddenly that it would kill everybody inside,” Reg said.
“It’s not a science problem,” Grandma said. “It’s an ethics problem.”
“Ah,” Rosa said. “So the issue is, do you jump?”
“No. You’re not big enough. But there’s a stranger next to you on the bridge who’s much larger. He’d be big enough to stop it.” Grandma took a sip of her juice and wiped her mouth. “So—do you push him?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said, spearing the last blintz. “But I need to bulk up in case I’m ever the other guy on the bridge.”
“Eat a blintz, save a life,” Trevor2 said. “Very public spirited of you.”
“There’s no answer,” Rosa said. “You can’t let the people die if you can stop it, and you can’t shove somebody else in front of a train.”
“That’s the answer,” Grandma said. “Sometimes there is no answer. You just do the best you can.”
“I hope I never have to make a decision like that in real life,” Eddie said with his mouth full. “I mean, so far this week I beat myself up and almost drowned.”
Grandma smiled a little sadly, and they stood to clear the dishes.