The local section! That�s the section for lost cats and Boy Scouts who do heroic things with bits of wood. I cough and poke down the newspaper. He looks up with quirked eyebrows and I ask, unusually, if he wants some coffee. He shakes his head, and I make some joke about the him that is drinking coffee, off in some other universe, and suddenly there are two of him, one sipping coffee and one chuckling before returning to the local section. I can see him perfectly, just by adjusting the focus of my eyes.
And then I shift my gaze a little bit, and there�s a guy who looks just like Jon but is black sitting at the table. He looks pretty odd as a black guy, but sips his coffee with a strange muskiness that makes it an elegant gesture.
I close my eyes and there are millions of Jons sitting at the table, and another million who are standing, and another million that don�t even look like Jon but are in the same position. I can�t find two quite alike. It�s like a kaleidoscope.
It takes me a few seconds to realize that real-life Jon is straightening, segmenting the others into a frenzy as he stands up, and saying that maybe he will have that coffee after all. I hand him a cup and mention the idea that maybe potential universes can die out due to particular choices, or they can merge with others. I can see his intellect begin to salivate. He pounces:
�What if they get tangled? Like, floating out in some ethereal space gumbo they get mixed together, or if one person who�s on two universes does the wrong thing and those two cross over?�
I think about this.
�So how would you know if this had happened?�
His eyes are shining. �That�s the magic. You wouldn�t. You couldn�t. It would be like ordinary life, but the whole structure of society might shift. Maybe every time there�s a radial change in history, it�s just been��
��universes getting squished together.�
We are both talking about this and the hands on the clock do their little pirouettes until his coffee is cold and mine is, like, stone cold. We are too single-minded to handle this whole �sip/talk� paradigm, so this sort of thing is a common occurrence.
Eventually, we run into more difficult quantum things and the conversation dies a little death, embarrassed by how little actual science we know. He mentions more mundane things, and then tosses in that he might work in the bookstore. I surprise myself by urging him (urging him? How very Supportive Girlfriend of me!) to go for it. I haven�t told anyone to �go for it� since about the seventh grade, but he looks excited. Maybe I am excited for him.
He offers to heat up the sandwiches, which we also didn�t touch. How very avant garde. So we sit and we munch and we discuss what�s going on in the local paper (his reading of which I completely don�t understand) and poke little holes in the crusts of the bread.
And then the lights flicker and die. It�s around two in the afternoon, looking stormy but not too dark, so I�m not especially terrified. It�s more of a nuisance than anything, but Jon goes white as a sheet and rushes upstairs to check the computer. I�d tell him about how Word recovers unsaved documents, but watching him so terribly afraid, I don�t think he�d even hear me.
As he punches buttons and exudes nervousness upstairs, I put things away and clean up the kitchen a bit. I can still see fine, as it�s mid-afternoon. In fact, I think I like this unusual blackout. It adds spice to a day without much spice.
And then I notice that one of the other Jons is in the kitchen with me.
Unlike the others, he exists in the same sphere as I, because I can see him in all levels of eye focus. And he looks menacing, with a thicker brow than Jon and bluer eyes that look like contacts. He�s slimmer, too, and harder-bodied. It looks like he would be able to do some harm to a five foot five girl with skinny arms. And then I notice that he�s standing there in the gloom clutching a knife.
I am frozen. Like a fish on ice, I blink and my mouth opens and closes but I am paralyzed. Like I will be despined and descaled at any moment. My fish brain struggles to send out signals to the rest of me, things like �run� and �hit him� but the little fish neurotransmitters are stuck, jammed like gears.
And then I manage to get some semblance of a signal in because my feet begin to push and my legs move accordingly and I have run to the front door and am just wailing on its knob, thwacking it in fifty different directions. I hasten a glance over my shoulder and the other Jon is still there, in the shadows of the kitchen, running his thumb over the broad dark blade he carries. He smiles like a shark.
And then, in what seems to be some other reality, I see him flicker. Once, twice. Like an image on a bad TV, he fills with static air, and then back to himself for one heart stopping second, and then he�s runny white dots and that �tssssssssskh� sound, and then he�s empty space that I hear the air rush into with a dull pop. Nature abhors a vacuum, I know, but I didn�t know that I would ever be so grateful to hear those words.
Jon moves downstairs again, slightly more relaxed, and sees me standing staring at the kitchen doorway, breathing like I�ve just won a marathon. He pauses, delicately, and asks if I want him to get a flashlight. I say that no, I am completely fine, and that it�s only two pee em.
�Okay,� he says, still somewhat wary. �Um. How are the phone lines, d�you think?�
�I don�t know.�
�Well, why don�t we check it out,� he says with a soothing superiority. �It�s something to do, anyway.�
We call the phone company, and then ConEd, and then the fire department, and they all say the same thing: just a random blackout, probably a tree down somewhere, it�ll be handled within the next two to three hours.
I don�t think it�s just a tree down somewhere.