Lost in the Multiverse by R E McLean

Author:R E McLean [McLean, R E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catawampus Press
Published: 2020-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

12

Box

Berkeley

1 April, 8:15pm

Schrödinger had stopped acting strangely. He’d joined Alex in the box for a few seconds, but quickly jumped out of her arms again. He wasn’t cooperating.

He hadn’t tried standing on his hind legs again. For this, Alex was relieved. Sure, some owners would be over the moon if their cat did this kind of thing. A phone would be pulled out from a pocket and the cat’s skills would go viral faster than you could say YouTube. But Alex didn’t want her cat getting any attention. He was a quantum cat, a miracle of science. He could die and come back to life again in his box. He could travel between worlds.

It was bad enough that the MIU knew about him. She didn’t want his abilities known to anyone else. If he tried that hind legs trick outside, it would be noticed.

And now, he’d disappeared. She’d heard the creak of her bedroom door about ten minutes earlier; his way of hinting that she should have an early night, with him curled up next to her. But it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Alex was tired; she’d had a long day trying to find traces of Mike’s disappearance in the records from their jump back from Silicon City. But she’d arranged to meet Rik and her dad in a half hour, at a bar near the University of Berkeley. She was running late.

She heaved her tired limbs up from her position in the box. She flattened it thoroughly—she didn’t want Schrödinger going inside without her knowledge—and went into the kitchen. The bedroom was in darkness, taunting her as she passed the door.

“Shrew?”

She opened the door and turned on the light.

“It’s early, boy. Come back into the living room.”

She approached the bed. “Shrew?”

He wasn’t there. Alex frowned. She went back into the living room. Piled up against a wall were half a dozen huge cardboard boxes, all flattened. Including the one she’d destroyed, and the one she’d just been sitting in. There wasn’t a single intact cardboard box in the apartment.

“Shrew, where are you?”

She bent down and peered under the couch. She opened drawers; when he was a kitten he’d liked to sleep in with her socks. She went into the bathroom. She lifted the toilet lid.

He wasn’t in the apartment. She hadn’t opened the door to anyone. She’d had no deliveries, no visitors.

Where was he?

She opened the door to the balcony. She didn’t remember opening it earlier, but she was tired. She fished her phone from her pocket and switched on the torch to scan the space.

A pigeon flapped its wings and took off from the railing ahead of her. She flinched, cursing it.

“Shrew?”

She took a step forward and her foot hit something. She flicked the torch on again and looked down.

It was a cardboard box.

“Oh, no.”

She opened the lid. There he was, as still as the Bay on a foggy day. Not breathing.

She put a hand on his back. He was cold. Her beloved pet was either dead, or in another universe.

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