You’d think an elevator with a hundred glowing green buttons would shoot into the air like the glass elevator at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But the Janus elevator rode like any other—smooth and slow, with just a few bumps here and there. That didn’t stop my insides from puddling at the thought of where I’d end up when it stopped.

If it stopped.

I had the distinct feeling of dropping, but the place didn’t have a basement that I knew of, so that couldn’t have been right. After what felt like forever, the car slowed to a halt and the door slid open. I took a deep breath and peered out to see…the very same elevator bank I’d left behind just a second before. I hadn’t moved at all; it had just felt like I had.

Stupid busted elevator.

At least there was no sign of the cleaners now. They must have gone deeper into the hotel. This was my best chance to sneak away. I rushed to the lobby and made a beeline through the side exit. But my relief disappeared in a poof as soon as I saw the bike rack.

Empty.

My bike and its lock were gone. This wasn’t the safest neighborhood in town, but come on, what kind of jerk steals a crappy old kid’s bike in broad daylight? Now I had to walk home.

I was so caught up in worrying about what Mom and Dad would say that I didn’t pay much attention to the world around me. Then I noticed the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner. It looked just like the regular old KFC that had been there forever, but the sign now read KENTUCKY FRIED FISH AND CHIPS, and posters in the window hawked haggis, black pudding, and bangers and mash.

I gazed at the sign for a long time to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Other than the name, nothing else had changed—same parking lot, same drive-thru lane, same cloud of cooking grease hovering overhead. I figured it must have been some kind of joke, the work of street artists pulling a prank. But no one driving by gave the sign a second glance. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed either if I hadn’t been on foot. Or maybe I was extra sensitive to practical jokes now that I was on the butt end of one. Thing is, KFC wasn’t the only business that had changed on this street. The Dick’s Sporting Goods had become Spotted Dick’s Sporting Goods, with the soccer gear in its window display advertised as FOOTBALL SUPPLIES. A few doors down, the 7-Eleven sold “crisps” instead of potato chips, and “petrol” instead of gas. And the old patriotic army surplus store flew a UK flag instead of its usual American one.

Since when had British stuff gotten so big?

Two men stepped out of a Royal Navy where an Old Navy used to be. They were dressed up like well-to-do gentlemen from American Revolution times: ruffled silk shirts, lacy frills, long-tailed coats, and knickers. Even powdered wigs. I figured they might have been headed to a costume party, until I saw other men and women wearing clothes from the same period. They spoke with British accents to boot. It was like a bunch of extras from some low-budget History Channel documentary had stepped off the screen and taken over the neighborhood.

As I tried to make sense of all this, a bus pulled up to the curb—a red double-decker bus like the ones people ride in London. It carried an ad banner featuring the Statue of Liberty, but she wore a fur-trimmed cape instead of robes and held a scepter instead of a torch. Her pointy crown had turned puffy and round, with diamonds stuck all over. VISIT NEW YORK, it read, and GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

When the bus pulled away, the store it had blocked came into view. It was a sleek space with big windows showcasing state-of-the-art phones, computers, and other gadgets. Nothing surprising there, but the big, stylized ME above the door looked just like the logo Dad used for Me Co. I sprinted across the street for a closer look. Inside were MeMinders in totally new shapes, sizes, and colors, plus a whole line of MePhones, MePads, and MeLaptops I’d never seen before.

This could mean only one thing: someone had stolen Dad’s company and made it a whole lot bigger.

I was reaching for my phone to call him when a little white pyramid in the window whirred to life. A label underneath it read SECUREME: IT’S A CAMERA. IT’S A PROJECTOR. IT’S SECURE. The lens in the middle of the pyramid shot out a hologram of Dad right beside me on the sidewalk. He wore a stylish black colonial outfit and white powdered wig. I could only watch in petrified silence as a sleek holo-car pulled up beside Holo-Dad, its door sliding open to reveal no one in the driver’s seat. “The Self-Driving MeCar from Me Corp.,” Holo-Dad said with a British accent. “Let life drive you.”

Why had I never heard of holographic commercials? Why would anybody put Dad in one? And when had he picked up that accent and those clothes? When I left the house that morning, Dad had been wearing jeans and a Dungeons & Dragons T-shirt. He was an adult nerd, not some kind of actor.

I turned to the street and saw a MeCar like the one in the ad waiting at the stoplight. It had no driver, just a family relaxing in the seats. A living room on wheels. The kids stared at MePads, the mom talked on a MePhone, and the dad made notes on holographic paper projecting from a MeMinder on his wrist. When the light changed, they didn’t even look up as the robot car whisked them away.

And just like that, it all came together in my head. Self-driving MeCars. Colonial fashion. British accents. Kentucky Fried Fish and Chips. The Statue of Royalty in New York. Me Corp. instead of Me Co.

This wasn’t my home.

The origami stalker hadn’t lied. There really was a multiverse. And I’d traveled through it to another Earth.