Part 1:
Every strand is a heartbeat, a soul, a mind. . . depending on which lens one chooses to look at them through. Many of his colleagues choose the lofty perspective of an outside observer rather than that of an active participant, as if each precious one might not be another version of their own life, or the life of someone they love. Each tagged tether is unique, differentiated by color, code, and location. Not all of them have a name in their file; even of those who do, they are not always similar to this, their origin universe, code name OEAR00.
Dorian, unlike his colleagues, has the unique and excruciating experience of knowing his universal selves are, in fact, always like this universe in the only way that matters. And he knows precisely which thread belongs to him, and which belongs to her.
Hers is blue. A blue so dark that it’s almost black, the exact shade of her eyes. He used to tease her about that. He told her if she wasn’t careful with her eye contact, someday he’d drown in her.
The first time he kissed her, he was long out of air.
It’s such an innocuous thing. He glares at it balefully, like perhaps if he does it will incinerate before him. This room—a chamber, almost like a solarium, but instead of stars against the screen it’s maps of souls, crisscrossing and overlapping and humming, tauntingly, with life—used to be one of his favorite places in the world. Now, it’s a wretched place to exist, a belligerent and cruel reminder of who he is, where he is, what he’s lost.
He stares at those strands of blue every day, aching to follow them. Even now, his eyes burn with the intensity of his gaze upon them, tantalized by their vibrancy, and he hates that he knows they exist, even though they are why he got this job. Soul-ties are rare, so rare that it was almost an impossible happenstance that someone interested in working within the system would have a soul-tie of his own.
At the time, when he was fresh out of school and the world was not yet familiar with the work his company—Janus, so named for the Roman god of doorways, time, travel—conducted, when he was less familiar with pain, the knowledge of it all intoxicated him. How many universes would they find? How many realities could they track? Touch?
How many ways could he love her? How many times did she choose him, too?
They didn’t prepare him for the reality. That in as many universes as he would love her, in this one—the only one that really matters— he would lose her.
*
“Excuse me,” she said.
That was all it took. He looked up, the tip of his pen still in his mouth, and it promptly fell from his grip, tumbled from his fingertips to clatter on the table, and he was lost in a bewitching storm of blue. Her eyes danced in some sort of incredulous amusement, and he knew his mouth still hung open—her first impression of him, later recounted to friends while his cheeks burned, was that of a fish floundering on land—but how could he remember to close it when he was far more concerned with remembering what basic human speech was?
“H—hello,” he stammered, and she waited, expectantly. He glanced around, swallowed nervously. Those eyes followed the movement of his Adam’s apple up and down, and his mouth turned cottony. “Can I—do you need something?”
“We’re closing,” she said, eyebrows raised.
Here, he realized what he had been too engrossed, too anxious to notice. There was nobody left in the restaurant except for him, his server, and her. A flush, hot and itchy and humiliating, crawled up his neck.
“I am so sorry,” he said, and scrambled to shove his notebook and textbooks away, the packet of articles he had been annotating. Instead of settling, as they should have, in his backpack, they swept to the floor. He swore and clambered out of the booth.
She was already crouched, scooping up the pages and scanning the titles with interest.
“‘New Company Aims to Bridge the Gap Between Worlds?’” She glanced up at him before flipping the paper over to read the next headline. “‘The God of Doors Is Awake: How Janus Will Open New Pathways.’ Do you work for them or something? I didn’t think it was, you know… real.”
“I—um, no, I—I don’t. Not yet. I’m just a student. I’m working on a project for my Universal Agency Theory class and Janus has changed the landscape of what we knew before so I had to scrap most of what I had done and now I’m just—I’m trying to catch up, it’s due in three weeks, and—”
She laughed. With the absence of music--which must have been turned off at some point prior to her approach in an attempt to get him to leave— and other patrons, it was uninhibited. The suddenness of the sound startled him, and his speech dropped off.
So did his heartbeat.
It faltered, for several beats, at the sound of her laughing at him. For the first time in weeks, he forgot all about universal agency theory, and he could not think of anything other than the fact that he could not imagine how he hadn’t noticed this beautiful woman with this beautiful laugh before she interrupted him.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, and her eyes swam with merriment. “You can stay. I have some things left to do, so you can keep me company on two conditions. First, you need to settle up with Tabby so she can go home; she’s a student, too, and has—how did you phrase it earlier, Tab? ‘A metric fuck ton of homework?’ Second, you’re going to tell me everything you know about multiverses, because apparently that’s real now, and it is officially the most interesting thing I’ve heard all week. Deal?”
His mouth didn’t cooperate for five seconds, which was four too many to not be embarrassing, but finally he managed to agree, and he closed out his tab with his server.
As he settled back into his booth, he realized he’d forgotten his manners yet again.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, found his feet again, and had to stifle a swell of butterflies—butterflies, as a grown man, an unbelievable embarrassment that renewed the red stains in his cheeks— when those unfathomably blue eyes landed on him once more. “My name is Dorian. And you’re—ah, what’s your name?”
She smiled and extended a hand, which he took despite being painfully aware of how clammy his own was. She didn’t seem to notice; if she did, she didn’t care. Her grasp was warm, confident. Her hand lingered in his as she told him,
“Amara. But everyone calls me Mari.”
*
“Dorian,” Aleksei’s voice rumbles through Dorian’s agonized reverie and leaves it in tatters. “Do I need to be worried you’re here again?”
Aleksei. Dorian’s best friend, best man, only solace in a world now empty of the woman he loves. Unfortunately, he also happens to be the head of Janus’ security department, tasked with securing alternate universes and preserving their integrity against those who would tamper too heavily, travel too recklessly.
It’s honestly not much of a risk. Few people have any true interest in making the jump. All the most intriguing versions of themselves are too far away to safely do it. The closest are too alike. What is there to wonder at, for most people?
Dorian is not most people.
Aleksei—broad, with an easy smile and easier temperament, clear blue eyes and a steady mind—has been a shoulder to lean on for months.
Dorian is not foolish enough to think Aleksei is not also steadfastly acting as sentry to protect Dorian’s other selves from his grief.
There are rules in place for good reason. He should know; he’s dedicated the last fifteen years of his life to only one other thing, besides loving Mari. It seemed so noble at the start. Accompanying bereaved individuals to bid farewell to the counterpart of their soul-tie in an alternate universe. They usually thanked him. . . After they wept, of course. After they raged. After they attempted to stay, or permanently join their lover in whatever they envisioned as an afterlife. They all thanked him, because even a minute more was better than the alternative. This, he has learned. There is no such thing as enough time.
But. But there are universes so remote, so far, that to travel to them would shred one’s sanity. The science Janus developed, while sophisticated and light years ahead of what its competitors were doing, had its limits. Sometimes the last safely reachable universe is too late. Empty. Sometimes the grief is too much. Sometimes there is not another chance to say goodbye.
“No,” he answers, but his voice cracks, and Aleksei sighs behind him.
“You can’t keep torturing yourself this way.”
“And I can’t keep using my keycard when I quit three weeks ago.”
Aleksei doesn’t answer for a few seconds, and Dorian doesn’t take his eyes off Mari’s tag on a nearby universe, tangled with a bronze thread, equally as vibrant, perhaps more important, and yet so much less compelling. Its tag bears a sequence of numbers and letters as familiar as hers, but these ones he hates.
AEAR143-DXP.
Dorian Pantazis, a version of himself alive with Mari in Alternate Earth 143.
Rage sends a tremor through his hands, and Dorian clenches his left hand into a fist.
“Well, yeah,” Aleksei finally heaves, grudgingly, like he hates Dorian for making him admit it.
A stab of resentment cripples his ability to think clearly for several seconds, mottles his vision red.
Aleksei is unique, too, in this peculiar new world full of many realities. Instead of being burdened with the weight of a soul-tie, though, he exists untethered. That is, he has no other alternate selves in the reachable worlds. That wasn’t always the case, of course. Aleksei’s many selves just have a startling penchant for early demise.
His last reachable self died last week.
Dorian can’t help the bitter taste of envy in his mouth. Aleksei doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand the loss and unrelenting, hostile mockery of this building. The cruel knowledge that he could reach her, but really, he can’t. Aleksei has his own burdens, but this? This enduring anguish? He doesn’t have to suffer this, and Dorian is so jealous of him that he could murder him.
It is, today, to his benefit to hide that as well as he possibly can.
For such delicate science and humanity’s precarious understanding of it, one would imagine better safeguards, tighter security, harder technology to steal. But the truth is much simpler, in that every tether requires its own connector, which is just a small box that contains two buttons, a dial, and traces of genetic code. The real trick is the medication used to restrict consciousness, so no one gets too active to control on a visit in an alternate mind. That, and the understanding of what the numbers on the dial mean. Dorian, of course, has no need for the medication and has fifteen years of experience with the connector.
To be fair to Janus, before today it certainly was more difficult to steal equipment and jump minds. Dorian’s suffering for the last year was exacerbated by the fact that his best friend was so extraordinarily adept at his job. Few individuals possess the mental fortitude and surety of self that Aleksei does. Dorian has never met a soul who could compartmentalize, cope, process, and move on from disturbing experiences faster than Aleksei. Aleksei faced universes that would have shredded the sanity of most other people. Guarding a few rooms in a labyrinthine facility rooted firmly in the physical world? Laughably easy for him. He made it look easier chasing people—and there have been only a handful to attempt it—through the universes.
But that’s not the case anymore. Wherever Dorian goes, Aleksei can no longer follow. And, having been a full year since the day Mari died, Aleksei’s guard is down. He thinks Dorian is through the worst of it. Were he going to do something, he would have already.
Wrong.
Dorian pulls his left hand from his pocket and drags it down his face. “You’re right, man. I’m sorry. It’s just. . . Anniversaries, you know? I can’t believe it’s been a year. I can’t believe she's right there, and I'm—"
“You’re still right here.”
I’m still right here.
*
When he lost her, she was turned toward him, laughing.
The laugh that escaped when she couldn’t help it— an eruption of joy, splitting her mouth wide and crinkling her eyes— it was his favorite laugh. It was the one that could draw the attention of everyone in a room. That time, alone in the car, it was all for him. She laughed, and he turned to look at her.
So he saw what she didn’t.
Headlights.
A woman distracted.
Her death.
He doesn’t know, now, if he thought this at the time, but it is a thought he hasn’t shaken since. The light of the approaching car haloed her. God was taunting him before she even took her last breath.
It was so mundane. Life-altering. Completely shattering. Yet, in essence, simply another accident. There wasn’t even glass left on the pavement when he went back three days later. No skid marks from resistant tries. No gouges in the earth to mark the shuddering topple of their vehicle to its side and its subsequent tear across the intersection. He stood on the corner of the sidewalk, swayed in lightheaded disbelief until he was forced to sit, and then he stayed there. Dozens of cars passed him by in the next hours. A profound bitterness overcame him in that time, a sour resentment that churned and, eventually, morphed into rage. No one cared. No one even knew. She was dead, ripped from his hands, her last laugh still echoing beneath the ruthless symphony of metal crushing metal and wailing sirens arriving much too late. She was gone, and he was the only one ruined.
Right here. Right where she left him.
*
