A Thousand Pieces of You

I’M NOT A PHYSICIST LIKE MOM. NOT EVEN A GRAD STUDENT in physics like Paul and Theo. I’m the homeschooled daughter of two scientists who gave me a lot of leeway to direct my own education. As the only right-brained member of the family, I wound up pursuing my passion for painting a whole lot more than I ever studied higher-level science. In the fall, I’m headed to the Rhode Island School of Design, where I’m going to major in art restoration. So if you want to mix oil paints, stretch a canvas, or discuss Kandinsky, I’m your girl. The science underlying cross-dimensional travel? No such luck. But here’s what I know:

The universe is in fact a multiverse. Countless quantum realities exist, all layered within one another; we’ll call these dimensions, for short.

Each dimension represents one set of possibilities. Essentially, everything that can happen does happen. There’s a dimension where the Nazis won World War II. A dimension where the Chinese colonized America long before Columbus ever sailed over. And a dimension where Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are still married. Even a dimension just like my own, identical in every way, except on one day in fourth grade, that Marguerite chose to wear a blue shirt while I chose to wear a green one. Every possibility, every time fate flips a coin, splits the dimensions yet again, creating yet more layers of reality. It goes on and on forever, to infinity.

These dimensions aren’t off in faraway outer space. They’re literally all around us, even within us, but because they exist in another reality, we can’t perceive them.

Early in her career, my mom, Dr. Sophia Kovalenka, hypothesized that we should be able not only to detect those dimensions but also to observe them—even interact with them. Everyone laughed. She wrote paper after paper, expanded her theory year after year, and nobody would listen.

Then one day, just when it looked like she was going to get permanently written off as a crackpot, she managed to publish one more paper pointing out parallels between wave theory and her work on dimensional resonance. Possibly only one scientist on earth took that paper seriously—Dr. Henry Caine, an English oceanographer. And physicist. And mathematician. And, obviously, overachiever. When he saw the paper, he was able to grasp potential that nobody else had ever seen before in the theory. This was lucky for Mom, because once they became research partners, her work really started to go somewhere.

This was even luckier for Josie and me, because Dr. Henry Caine would become our dad.

Fast-forward twenty-four years. Their work had reached the point where it was starting to attract notice even outside scientific circles. The experiments in which they’d shown evidence of alternate dimensions had been replicated by other scientists at Stanford and Harvard; nobody was laughing at them anymore. They were ready to try traveling between dimensions—or, at least, to fashion a device that could make it possible.

Mom’s theory is that it would be very, very difficult for physical objects to move between dimensions, but energy should be able to move fairly easily. She also says consciousness is a form of energy. This led to all kinds of crazy speculation—but mostly Mom and Dad remained focused on building a device that would turn dimensional travel into more than a dream. Something that would allow people to journey to another dimension at will, and, even trickier, to come back again the same way.

This was daring. Even dangerous. The devices have to be made out of specific materials that move much more easily than other forms of matter; they have to anchor the consciousness of the traveler, which is apparently very difficult; and about a million other technical considerations I’d have to get umpteen physics degrees to even understand. Long story short: the devices are really hard to make. Which is why my parents went through several prototypes before even considering a test.

So when they finally had one that seemed like it would work, only a couple of weeks ago, we had to celebrate. Mom and Dad, who usually drink nothing stronger than Darjeeling, opened a bottle of champagne. Theo handed me a glass too, and nobody even cared.

“To the Firebird,” Theo said. The final prototype lay on the table around which we stood, its workings gleaming, intricate layers of metal folded in and atop each other like an insect’s wings. “Named after the legendary Russian creature that sends heroes on amazing quests and adventures”—here Theo nodded at my mother, before continuing—“and of course after my own muscle car, because yes, it’s just that cool.” Theo is a guy who says things like “muscle car” ironically. He says almost everything ironically. But there was real admiration in his eyes as he looked at my parents that night. “Here’s hoping we have some adventures of our own.”

“To the Firebird,” Paul said. He must have been plotting what he was going to do right then, even as he lifted his glass and clinked it against Dad’s.

Basically, after decades of struggle and ridicule, my parents had finally reached the point where they’d gained real respect—and they were on the brink of a breakthrough that would take them far beyond that. Mom would’ve been heralded as one of the leading scientists in all history. Dad would have gotten at least Pierre Curie status. We could maybe even have afforded for me to take a summer art tour in Europe, where I could go to the Hermitage and the Prado and every other amazing gallery I’d heard of but never seen before. Everything we’d ever dreamed of was on the horizon.

Then their trusted research assistant, Paul Markov, stole the prototype, killed my father, and ran.

He could have gotten away with it, slipping into another dimension beyond the reach of the law: the perfect crime. He vanished from his dorm room without a trace, leaving his door locked from the inside.

(Apparently when people travel between dimensions, their physical forms are “no longer observable,” which is a quantum mechanics thing, and explaining it involves this whole story about a cat that’s in a box and is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box, and it gets seriously complicated. Never ask a physicist about that cat.)

Nobody could find Paul; nobody could catch him. But Paul didn’t count on Theo.

Theo came to me earlier this evening as I sat on the rickety old deck in our backyard. The only illumination came from the full moon overhead and the lights Josie had strung on the railing last summer, the ones shaped like tropical fish that glowed aquamarine and orange. I had on one of Dad’s old cardigans over my ivory lace dress. Even in California, December nights can be cold, and besides—the sweater still smelled like Dad.

I think Theo had watched me for a while before he came out there, waiting for me to pull myself together. My cheeks were flushed and tear streaked. I’d blown my nose so many times that it felt raw every time I inhaled. My head throbbed. But for the moment, I’d cried myself out.

Theo sat on the steps beside me, jittery, on edge, one foot bouncing up and down. “Listen,” he said. “I’m about to do something stupid.”

His dark eyes met mine, so intent that I thought, for one crazy moment, despite everything that was going on, he was about to kiss me.

Instead, he held out his hand. In it were the two other versions of the Firebird. “I’m going after Paul.”

“You—” My wavering voice, already strained from crying, broke. I had so many questions that I couldn’t even begin at first. “You still have the old prototypes? I thought you broke them down afterward.”

“That’s what Paul thought too. And—well, technically, always what your parents thought.” He hesitated. Even mentioning Dad, only a day after his death, hurt so terribly—for Theo nearly as much as for me. “But I kept the parts we didn’t reuse. Tinkered with them, borrowed some equipment from the Triad labs. Used the advances we made on the last Firebird to improve these two. There’s a decent shot one of these will work.”

A decent shot. Theo was about to take an incredible risk because it gave him a “decent shot” at avenging what Paul had done.

As funny as he’d always been, as flirty as we occasionally got, I’d sometimes wondered whether Theo Beck was full of crap underneath his indie band T-shirts and his hipster hat and the 1981 Pontiac he’d fixed up himself. Now I was ashamed to have ever doubted him.

“When people travel through dimensions,” he said, staring down at the prototypes, “they leave traces. Subatomic—okay, I’m gonna cut to the chase. The point is, I can go after Paul. No matter how often he jumps, how many dimensions he tries to move through, he’ll always leave a trace. And I know how to set these to follow that trace. Paul can run, but he can’t hide.”

The Firebirds glinted in his palm. They looked like odd, asymmetrical bronze lockets—maybe jewelry fashioned in the era of Art Nouveau, when organic shapes were all the rage. One of the metals inside was rare enough that it could only be mined in a single valley in the whole world, but anyone who didn’t know better would just think they were pretty. Instead the Firebirds were the keys to unlock the universe. No—the universes.

“Almost anywhere,” Theo answered, and he gave me a look. “You know the limits, right? You didn’t tune out every time we talked about this around the dinner table?”

Living beings can only travel to dimensions where they already exist. A dimension where my parents never met? That’s a dimension I can never see. A dimension where I’m already dead? Can’t get there from here. Because when a person travels to another dimension, they actually materialize within their other self. Wherever that other version of you might be, whatever they’re doing: that’s where you are.

Theo shrugged. “I’ll end up in the next universe over, I guess. But it’s no big. When he jumps again, I’ll have a chance to pick up his trace from there.” His gaze was far away as he turned the Firebirds over in his palm.

To me it sounded like Paul’s best bet would be to keep jumping, as fast as he could, until he found a universe where none of the rest of us existed. Then he could remain there as long as he liked, without ever getting caught.

But the thing was, Paul wanted something besides destroying my parents. No matter what a creep he’d turned out to be, he wasn’t stupid. So I knew he wouldn’t do this out of sheer cruelty. If he’d just wanted money, he would have sold the device to somebody in his own dimension, not fled into another one.

Whatever he wanted, he couldn’t hide forever. Sooner or later, Paul would have to go after his true, secret goal. When he did, that was when we could catch him.

We could catch him. Not Theo alone—both of us. Theo held two prototypes in his hand.

The cool breeze ruffled my hair and made the lights flutter back and forth on the deck railing, like the plastic fish were trying to swim away. I said, “What happens if the Firebird doesn’t actually work?”

He scraped his Doc Martens against the old wood of the deck; a bit of it splintered away. “Well, it might not do anything. I might just stand there feeling stupid.”

“No, the worst-case scenario involves me getting blended into so much atomic soup.”

“Won’t happen,” he said, cocky as ever. “At least, I strongly doubt it.”

My voice was hardly more than a whisper. “But you’d take that risk. For Dad’s sake.”

But he glanced away after only a second, adding, “Like I said, it won’t happen. Probably either of these would work. I mean, I rebuilt them, and as we both know, I’m brilliant.”

“When you guys were talking about testing one of these, you said there was no way in hell any of you should even consider it.”

“Yeah, well, I exaggerate a lot. You must have realized that by now.” Theo may be full of it, but I give him this: at least he knows he’s full of it. “And besides, that was before I got to work on them. The Firebirds are better now than ever before.”

It wasn’t like I made a decision at any one moment. When Theo came to sit with me on the deck, I felt powerless against the tragedy that had ripped my family in two; by the time I spoke, I’d known exactly what I intended to do for what seemed like a long time. “If you’re that sure, then okay. I’m in.”

His fist closed around the Firebirds, and he stared down at his hand like he wished he hadn’t brought them both and given me the idea—but too bad, and too late.

Quietly I said, “You’re not to blame. But you’re also not talking me out of it.”

Theo leaned closer to me, and the smirk was gone. “Marguerite, have you thought about the risks you’d be taking?”

“They’re no worse than the risks you’d take. My dad is dead. Mom deserves some justice. So Paul has to be stopped. I can help you stop him.”

“It’s dangerous. I’m not even talking about the dimension-jumping stuff right now. I mean—we don’t know what kind of worlds we’ll find ourselves in. All we know is that, wherever we end up, Paul Markov is there, and he’s a volatile son of a bitch.”

Paul, volatile. Two days earlier, I would have laughed at that. To me Paul had always seemed as quiet and stolid as the rock cliffs he climbed on weekends.

Now I knew that Paul was a murderer. If he’d do that to my father, he’d do it to Theo or me. None of that mattered anymore.

“Think about it. You can’t jump into any dimensions where you don’t exist. There are probably some dimensions I exist in that you don’t.”

“Still.” I took Theo’s free hand then, like I could make him understand how serious I was just by squeezing tightly. “I can follow him to places where you can’t. I extend your reach. I make the chances of finding him a lot better. Don’t argue with me, because you know it’s true.”

Theo breathed out, squeezed my hand back, let it go, and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. He was restless and jumpy as always—but I could tell he was considering it.

When his dark eyes next met mine, he sighed. “If your mother had any idea we were talking about this, she’d skin me alive. I’m not being metaphorical about that. I think she could actually, literally skin me. She gets the wild eyes sometimes. There’s Cossack blood in her; I’d bet anything.”

I hesitated for a moment, thinking of what this meant for my mother. If something went wrong on this trip—if I turned into atomic soup—she would have lost both me and Dad within the space of two days. There weren’t even words for what that would do to her.

But if Paul got away with it, that would kill her just as surely—and me, too. I wasn’t going to let that happen. “You’re already talking about Mom’s revenge. That means we’re doing this together, doesn’t it?”

“Only if you’re absolutely sure. Please think about this for a second first.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true, but it didn’t matter. I meant it then as much as I mean it now. “I’m in.”

But where is here, exactly? As I walk along the street, crowded despite the late hour, I try to study my surroundings. Wherever I am, it’s not California.

Picasso could have painted this city with its harsh angles, its rigidity, and the way dark lines of steel seem to slash through buildings like knife strokes. I imagine myself as one of the women he painted—face divided in two, asymmetrical and contradictory, one half appearing to smile while the other is silently screaming.

I stop in my tracks. By now I’ve found my way to the river-side, and across the dark water, illuminated by spotlights, is a building I recognize: St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. Dad is . . . he was English. He didn’t move to the United States until he and Mom started working together. In this dimension, I guess she came to his university instead, and we all live here in London.

The thought of my father alive again, somewhere nearby, bubbles up inside me until I can hardly think of anything else. I want to run to him right now, right this second, and hug him tight and apologize for every time I ever talked back to him or made fun of his dorky bow ties.

But this version of my dad won’t be my dad. He’ll be another version. This Marguerite’s father.

I don’t care. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to Dad again, and I’m not wasting it.

The three trips I’ve taken to London to visit Aunt Susannah were all fairly quick; Aunt Susannah’s all about shopping and gossip, and as much as Dad loved his sister, he could take about six days with her, maximum, before he lost it. But I was there long enough to know that London shouldn’t look anything like this.

Even as I walk along the street by the South Bank of the Thames, I can tell computers were invented a little earlier here, because they’ve advanced further. Several people, despite the drizzling rain, have paused to bring up little glowing squares of light—like computer screens, except they’ve appeared in thin air in front of their users. One woman is talking to a face; that must be a holographic phone call. As I stand there, one of my wide bangle bracelets is shimmering with light. I lift my wrist closer to my face and read the words, written on the inside in small metallic type:

ConTech Personal Security

DEFENDER Model 2.8

Powered by Verizon

I’m not quite sure what that means, but I don’t think this bracelet is just a bracelet.

What other kinds of advanced technology do they have here? To everybody else in this dimension, all this stuff is beyond routine. Both the hoverships above London and the no-rail monorail snaking along overhead are filled with bored passengers, for whom this is just the end of another dull day.

There’s no place like home, I think, but the feeble joke falls flat even inside my own head. I look down again at the high heels I wear, so unlike my usual ballet flats. Ruby slippers they’re not.

Then I remind myself that I’ve got the most powerful technology of all—the Firebird—hanging around my neck. I open the locket and look at the device inside.

It’s complicated. Very complicated. The thing reminds me of our universal remote, which has so many keys and buttons and functions that nobody in my household—which contains multiple physicists, including my mother who is supposed to be the next Einstein—none of us can figure out how to switch from the Playstation to the DVR. But just like with the universal remote, I’ve learned a few functions, the ones that matter most: How to jump into a new dimension. How to jump back from one if I land somewhere immediately dangerous. How to spark a “reminder,” if needed.

(The idea was that people who traveled between dimensions wouldn’t remain fully conscious throughout—that they’d be more or less asleep within the other versions of themselves. So you can use the Firebird to create a reminder, which would leave your consciousness in control for a while longer. Well, so much for theory. As far as I can tell, the reminders aren’t necessary at all.)

As I look down at the glittering Firebird in my palm, I remind myself that if I learned how to work this thing, I can handle anything this dimension has to throw at me. Re-energized, I start observing the people around me more closely. Watch and learn.

A woman touches a metal tab clipped to her sleeve, and a holographic computer screen appears in front of her. Quickly I run my hands over my own clothes; this silver jacket doesn’t have anything like that on the sleeves, but something similar is pinned to my lapel. I tap it—and jump as a hologram screen appears in front of me. The hologram jumps with me, tethered to the metal tab.

Okay, that’s . . . pretty cool. Now what? Voice commands, like Siri on my phone? Can something be “touch-screen” if there’s no screen to touch? Experimentally I hold out one hand, and a holographic keyboard appears in front of the screen. So if I pretend to type on it . . .

Sure enough, the words I type appear on the screen, in the search window: PAUL MARKOV.

As soon as the eighty zillion results pop up, I feel like a fool. Markov is a fairly common last name in Russia, where Paul’s parents emigrated from when he was four; Paul, which has a Russian form too (Pavel), is also popular. So thousands and thousands of people have that name.

So I try again, searching for Paul Markov plus physicist. There’s no guarantee Paul would be a physics student here, too, except that I have to start somewhere, and apparently physics is the only human endeavor he remotely understands.

These results look more promising. Most of them focus on the University of Cambridge, so I pull up the one titled “Faculty Profile.” It’s for a professor with another name altogether, but the profile lists his research assistants, and sure enough, there’s Paul Markov’s photo. It’s him.

Cambridge. That’s in England too. I could get there within a couple of hours—

We can track Paul, because the Firebirds allow us to know when a dimensional breach occurs. But that means Paul can also track us.

If this is the right dimension—if this is where Paul fled after cutting my dad’s brakes and stealing the final Firebird—then Paul already knows I’m here.