In Any Lifetime: A Novel by Guggenheim Marc

Author:Guggenheim, Marc
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

NOW

Only in the mind of a scientist, Victor reflects, could curiosity eclipse vengeance. The thought of sabotaging Jonas’s tether remains warm, a comfort. But he set it aside once the Cray reported that Jonas had returned to his Riverside Drive apartment. By his count, that would make at least three separate universes where Jonas had chosen to call the brownstone home.

Victor had been so singularly focused on revenge that he hadn’t taken the time to consider a multiverse’s worth of Jonases. He knew they existed, of course. But his hatred for “his” Jonas was so lasered that the notion of doppelgängers was an unwelcome distraction. Now, though, the thought of Jonas finding a twin—meeting him, talking to him, and, God forbid, gaining assistance from him—can’t be ignored.

And so Victor stands in a living room, which stirs a memory of visits he’d made to the same home in another universe. But now the place reeks and is in disarray. He finds an arrangement of photographs, all turned down or backward. The Jonas who resides in this universe knew Amanda and lost her. The thought brings a smile.

He stands there for longer than he should. At some point, Jonas—this universe’s version or the one Victor knows—will either come home or hear him walking about. Victor should be concerned, afraid of a confrontation, but he isn’t. That’s what the M&P 9 Shield at the small of his back is for.

A voice comes from the apartment’s recesses, slurred and laced with humor, but the voice is unmistakably Jonas’s. “Came back, huh? Nice to see you come to your senses.” An amused snort. “Always knew I was smart.”

Victor follows the familiar voice and enters the bedroom. The smell is significantly worse in here. Black garbage bags hang over the windows. The only furniture is a ladder, a chair, the bed, and a nightstand burdened with stacks of papers. The once-white bedsheets are a grayish yellow and swirled in a torrent. Equations, sketchy and desperate, flow across every wall. Erratic though they might be, Victor sees in them the calculations of multiversal destinations.

And then he sees him. Standing near the bed. Bloodshot eyes. Sallow skin painted with a thin layer of stubble. A mop of hair as unruly as those bedsheets. But still recognizable as Jonas. At least, a Jonas. He sways on his feet. A bottle of bourbon, with maybe a mouthful left in it, dangles from his fingers.

“Who the hell are you?” this Other Jonas says, his tongue languid. Whatever fear he might have of an intruder in his home has evidently been muted by the bourbon.

Interesting, Victor observes, apparently I don’t exist here.

He returns his gaze to the equations on the wall. That this universe’s Jonas managed to develop the Many Worlds Proof without a Victor Kovacevic to crib from should be vexing. But Victor’s narcissism stands against the thought like a wall, preventing him from entertaining the notion that any version of Jonas is capable of discovering the secrets of the multiverse without drafting off Victor’s brilliance.

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