He described the good that could be achieved with the key, spoke of the fearsome power that corrupt men and women could acquire through the use of it, and explained some of the seemingly infinite dangers to which the device could expose its user. The details were impressive in their complexity, convincing in their consistency, and totally crazy.
“If this is all true,” she said, “with a hop, skip, and a jump, you could find a world where no one’s hunting you, where you can live openly and in peace.”
He sighed. “If only. In numerous timelines, I seem to have failed to convincingly fake my death. I’m still hunted by ruthless people with bottomless resources.”
As if this were a weird parlor game, Michelle found herself suggesting alternatives. “Maybe a world where you were never born?”
He nodded. “During the project, I explored a few where that might be true, but they weren’t worlds where I would want to live.”
“Why not?”
His expression darkened. “Certain conditions . . . threats . . . horrors unspeakable.”
Michelle still wasn’t sure if they were having a rational conversation or were the equivalent of UFO enthusiasts discussing the style of aluminum headgear that best foiled extraterrestrial mind readers. She resorted to her wine.
After a pause for thought, she said, “So keep looking. Keep searching for a world to live where you were never born.”
“During the project, before I destroyed all the records of it and fled, I ported to a hundred worlds, actually a hundred and five, maybe six, out of the hundred eighty-seven that my team cataloged. After that, I ported to eighty more.” He spoke as casually as if he were talking about senior-service jitney rides to a series of local malls. “But I can’t handle it anymore, the porting. I’ve got an adventurous mind, but I’m not physically adventurous. Or emotionally capable. Not any longer. I’ve too often been terrified out of my wits. All I want now is quiet and a few friends and books to read.”
He didn’t appear to be the least frightened as he ate cheese and figs, smiling at her as if he were an uncle enjoying the company of his favorite niece.
So she said, “Terrified by what?”
He set aside the stripped stem of a fig, swallowed a bite of fruit, blotted his lips with his napkin, took a sip of wine, blotted his lips again, and during all that, his face paled so much that the candlelight could not conceal the loss of color. His eyes, the pure blue of a deep clear sky, became the blue of the sky reflected on water, as tears brimmed but didn’t spill.
“Some things I’ve seen can’t be discussed at table, not if I’m to keep down the lovely meal you prepared. I’ll describe a parallel world that was hideous, but not as horrible as some others. You may nevertheless need your wine.”
“I already do.”
“I mean, your glass is empty.”
She poured another serving for herself. And one for him.
He stared into the chardonnay, as though the wine, in which swam scintillant shapes of candlelight, could be consulted regarding the designs of fate, as if it were a liquid crystal ball.
With a solemnity new to him, he said, “There is a timeline in which the United States endures a societal convulsion similar to the French Revolution, but even worse. It is led by modern Jacobins, not spawned by the lower classes but by the highest, by privileged young men and women made ignorant by the most expensive universities and schooled in violence by the culture of death that produced them. It is as though Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities had been rewritten by a violence-porn hack, filmed by the most deranged talent in Hollywood. The streets run with blood, as they did in the Dickens novel, as in fact they did in France between 1789 and 1794, during the Reign of Terror. Everywhere, scaffolds are erected in the streets, and the condemned are hung by their wrists to be eviscerated. Children are beheaded in front of their parents, the parents stoned to death by mobs. Tracts of houses and apartment buildings are set afire to exterminate residents who’ve been declared moral vermin. What we think could never happen here happens there, as it happened in Germany in the 1930s, as it happened in China under Mao. Nihilism and irrationality spread like a plague. Crazed, bestial emotion replaces logic and reason. Madness is redefined as moral clarity. The past is destroyed and reinvented to ensure a future of utopian justice, though justice no longer exists, has become mere revenge, often revenge against enemies more imagined than real, even revenge of Jacobin against Jacobin, as the insanity breeds more paranoia. I’ve seen women gang-raped in the streets by men urged on by other women waving banners of female solidarity. I’ve seen the heads of babies, from families of the revolution’s enemies, scattered across a day-care playground like so many spoiled cabbages discarded by a grocer.”
Ed lost the ability to withhold his tears. Lambent light glazed his wet face. His mouth had gone soft, and a tremor afflicted him.
Pushing aside her glass of wine, Michelle not only returned to sobriety in an instant, but she also abandoned the doubt with which she had thus far received his story. In his voice, demeanor, and tears, she recognized a truth that she only wished might be a lie.
She said, “And that wasn’t the worst world you’ve seen?”
He found his voice again. “Understand, many timelines are as hospitable as this one, some even better. But across an infinite multiverse of worlds, you can find all the evil realms that humanity has imagined—and some beyond imagining. I’m burnt out on travel. I haven’t the nerve for it anymore. My heart can’t take it. I was a pacifist once. A pacifist! I’m not anymore. I am armed. I can kill. The things I’ve seen . . . they’ve changed me. I don’t want to be changed more than I’ve already been. I don’t want the multiverse. All I want is a home, books, and the peace to read them.”
Michelle stared at the key to everything, which lay between her and Ed. As the candles pulsed, plumes of light and plumes of shadow seemed to flow across the table to the device, as if it possessed a gravity that would in time draw all things to it.
“You’re terrified of what’s out there, the places this thing can take you, worse even than the terror of that other America you described—and yet you want me to use it.”
“Only carefully, with my guidance. To undo the tragedy, connect with a version of your husband and child who live elsewhere and have lost you, bring back together a family that should never have been torn asunder. During this past year, I’ve come to love you as I might a daughter, Michelle. I want to cure your sorrow, put an end to your loneliness, so you can be happy.”
Maybe it was real—this science, this incredible promise. But if it was a false hope, it would be worse than no hope at all.
She said, “It sounds very nice, a dream, a fairy tale. But if you don’t want to ‘port’ anymore—”
“For you, only to make this happen, I would port again.”
“Yeah, well, with an infinite number of worlds to search, the chances of finding Jeffy and Amity alone, needing me—they’re zero.”