The last Universe by William Sleator

Author:William Sleator
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Lisa was over a few minutes after nine.

We had eaten breakfast—again, Gary had two eggs and two pieces of toast—and I was asking him questions on his porch.

“Okay, I guess I can accept about the cat dying and the cat staying alive, and how that makes two universes, one with a dead cat and one with a live cat." I thought of Gary, and which alternative would happen to him in this universe, but I didn't mention it—it would get things off to a bad start. “But you also said there are infinite universes. That's kind of hard to believe, even though you said they proved it. Why do there have to be infinite ones?"

He sighed. “I'm not sure exactly how to explain it. It's like, there are all these interactions going on in the quantum world. And every time one thing happens instead of another thing, then—"

The doorbell rang. I stood up. "Should I bring her in here?"

He shrugged, acting like he didn't care, though I was sure he was very glad to be seeing another kid—and probably would soon be showing off all his scientific knowledge. "Sure. Why not?" he said. "As long as you're sure we can trust her."

"Come on out to the porch," I said to Lisa at the door. "We're talking about some weird stuff." I didn't mention that part of my reason for asking Gary all these questions was to put off going into the garden for as long as possible. Gary was so eager. I had my reasons not to be.

"Do you know about Schrodinger's cat?" was the first thing Gary said to Lisa when he saw her.

"Hey, yeah," she said coolly. "I was going to ask you about that. It sounds weird, but—Susan said the garden acts the way it does because it's a quantum garden."

"Do you know that Luke's cat is named Sro-dee?" Gary said.

"As in Schrodinger," she said like a student in class. "Does that mean Luke's part of the quantum stuff, too?"

"I don't know," Gary said. "But here's what I do know. Not one word of any of this is leaving this house and this

garden. You got that? Unless you swear the strongest oath not to tell a single person about what's going on in this garden, you're leaving now. Do you understand? Did you tell anybody yet?"

"I told my parents about the lotuses and the other flowers. They didn't take it seriously."

"That's good," Gary said. He gave me a hard look. "We're lucky she didn't spread it around. From now on you are not to tell anybody about any of this. You got that? If people find out what's really going on, they'll try to stop it. They'll mow the garden to the ground." He turned to Lisa. "You don't want that to happen, do you?"

Lisa put her hand to her mouth and blankly shook her head. "No," she said. "I think the garden is really cool."

"I hope so," Gary said. "Are you religious? Like, can you swear an oath to God?"

Lisa squeezed her fingers tightly together.

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