Multiversum (16 page)

‘
Buongiorno, signora …
' Jenny began in her Australian-accented Italian. ‘I wonder if I could ask for a piece of information?'

‘Go right ahead.'

‘I was trying to find the phone number or the address of a boy who plays on your basketball team. His name is Alex Loria.'

‘Alex Loria? The captain? I'm sorry, we aren't allowed to provide personal information over the phone.'

Jenny looked up at the ceiling in annoyance. ‘Could you at least tell me what city he lives in?'

‘Young lady, the number you dialled to call me starts with 02 — that's the prefix for Milan. All the players here are from Milan, except for a few who live outside of town. Was there anything else you needed?'

Jenny shut her eyes, knowing that the information she'd just received was quite sufficient.

‘Thank you very much,' she said, and hung up.

There was no need to look any further. Alex was the captain of a basketball team that played at a sports centre in Milan. He was the same age as her. The information he'd provided fit perfectly. She wasn't crazy, she wasn't suffering from a mental disorder, she hadn't made everything up.

Alex was real. And now it was up to her to go find him.

20

After the conversation with Jenny, Alex charged into the shower. As the hot water finally poured down over his athletic body, his mind went to his parallel self, the one he had told Jenny to find.

What could his life be like?
he wondered as he squeezed some shampoo out of a tube and into his hand.
How different would it be from mine? Is he the captain of the basketball team too? Did he win the Athlete of the Year award last season?

As Alex lost himself in his imagination, trying to imagine that alternative world, in her reality Jenny was already in the back seat of a taxi, heading for the airport. Without wasting a second, she had tossed a few clothes into her swimming bag, stolen her mother's credit card, done a quick online search on the sites of several airlines, and booked the flight that would take her to see her soul mate.

This was sheer madness. She had to do it at once or she'd never have the courage again. Only later would it become clear to her just how enormous the consequences of that sudden impulse would be.

‘He's real, he's real, he's real …' she kept saying to herself as her taxi shot through the streets of Melbourne.

Jenny got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Boarding wouldn't be for a while. She spent the whole time walking back and forth, pacing the length of Tullamarine Airport. This was the first time she'd ever taken a plane all by herself. Time seemed to stand still. Alex's face continued to invade her thoughts.

When boarding was called, Jenny took a deep breath and went over to the gate, one of the first passengers in line.

The plane was packed. She had a window seat on the wing.

As she was fastening her seatbelt prior to take-off, she took out the inflight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her. She bit her nails and noticed that she was shaking. She needed to find a way of distracting herself.

What am I doing?
she thought as she looked at the cover of the inflight magazine: it was a picture of Barcelona as seen from the Parc de Montjuïc.
Barcelona …
A sweet smile appeared on Jenny's lips.

Six months ago, she'd gone on a school trip to Spain. Her first trip to Europe. It had lasted for ten unforgettable days.

A series of flashbacks went through her mind: the bizarre shapes of Gaudí's architecture, which so reminded her of the sinuous shapes of the ocean waves; the tour they took of Poble Espanyol, the village with reconstructions of ancient Spanish cities, where she had bought a leather bracelet that she still wore on her wrist; the excursions to the beach with her schoolmates, whenever their teachers let them have a free afternoon to do as they liked. The beach could be reached by metro. Three stops on the yellow line from Passeig de Gràcia, where their hotel was located, to Barceloneta. And then there was the Hard Rock Cafe in the Plaça de Catalunya, where the entire group had taken up a table for sixteen and made so much noise, according to her maths teacher, that they'd driven the waiters and waitresses out of their minds.

Next to Jenny, a man in a US park ranger's uniform gave her an odd look, as she smiled with her eyes closed. She also remembered one evening when her classmate Marty, a surfer and ice-hockey player, had come on to her. Sitting next to Jenny on the hotel terrace, he'd moved closer than usual to her and started plying her with compliments. Then he'd tried to kiss her on the neck. She'd avoided his passes and had rejected him in no uncertain terms. Marty was good-looking. Dark-haired, with green eyes, washboard abs, and a sculpted physique, he had enjoyed a certain amount of success with the girls at school. Perhaps the problem was that Jenny, deep in her heart, had always only had room for that distant voice, that mysterious boy who lived inside her head.

If I hadn't gone on that trip to Europe, I'd never have had a valid passport and I wouldn't be on this plane now
, she thought, as she watched the flight attendant go through the instructions for what to do in an emergency.

Twenty long minutes after the plane left the gate, it finally lifted off from Australian soil and into the air.

I'm actually doing this
, Jenny thought to herself. Outside the little porthole, houses and streets were falling away and becoming smaller and smaller.
I'm going to Italy. I must be out of my mind.

Shortly after take-off, she put the magazine back in the seat pocket, leaned her head against the window, and tried to fall asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, she had a hard time focusing on her surroundings. The lights were too bright. She didn't know how long she'd slept. But that wasn't the real problem. As soon as she got a good look around her, Jenny jerked upright in her seat.

She wasn't on the plane.

Right in front of her was an antique wooden sideboard with some family photographs. There was her mother, Clara, as a little girl. There she was, along with Roger, on the day he swam his first race.

On the right was a painting she remembered well. It was of a sailboat withstanding the impact of a raging storm.

‘So you still wear it …' came the voice of her grandmother Linda, fragile and delicate as ever.

‘I … what? Am I dreaming?' Jenny was upset.

‘The triskelion, Jenny,' her grandfather broke in. ‘You still wear the triskelion around your neck.'

‘No, wait …
You
gave the necklace to Grandma; she only gave it to me when … This doesn't make sense.'

‘My darling girl, is something wrong?' asked Linda.

Jenny looked around, even more confused.

That sideboard …
she thought as she looked at the piece of antique furniture again. She knew it well. It had wound up at her house, on the second floor, where her mum and dad slept. Just like other objects from the country house, it had also been transported to the house on Blyth Street when her grandmother had died, the year after her grandfather's death.

But right then and there, she saw them both in front of her, each holding a cup of tea.

‘I don't feel well … I think I must have lost my memory,' Jenny lied. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Is something bothering you, princess?' Her grandfather's voice was as sweet and soothing as it had been when he had told her hundreds of fairytales when she was small.

Jenny couldn't hold it in any longer. She burst into tears after she heard those words, got up from her armchair, and threw herself into her grandparents' arms. ‘I miss you both so much …'

‘Oh, my love, we're right here. You can come see us whenever you want!'

‘But the two of you … you're dead!'

Linda looked at her in bafflement. Jenny seemed upset and … so sure of what she was saying.

‘Sorry, I have to go outside for just a second,' Jenny said, suddenly standing up. She was familiar with this street. She walked up the steps from the cellar kitchen, and came to the front entrance. She walked outside, closing the heavy wooden door behind her. She took a few timid steps on the grass that surrounded the house. The sweet smell of the fields after the rain was inebriating. A few metres further on, she saw a tree: in her world, after her grandparents' death, she had carved a phrase into its bark:
Two new stars in heaven
.

‘It's gone,' Jenny's voice was cracking with fear. ‘It's not there anymore. My epitaph. My memorial. It's vanished.'

Eyes closed, hands wrapped around the triskelion, she started to tremble.

Then, in a flash, the vortex swept her away. She was catapulted once again into that maelstrom of emotions and images, as if she were being dragged away from one reality only to reawaken somewhere else.

‘Tea or coffee, miss?' The flight attendant stood looking at her with a tray in her hands.

‘Miss, would you like some tea or coffee?' repeated the young woman in the airline's dark-blue uniform.

‘Nothing for me, thanks,'
Jenny mumbled in a daze. She was back on the plane, travelling towards Alex.

21

Marco was microwaving some bread as he thought about what Alex had said. He imagined his friend stretched out on the beach, with his head craning up and his eyes fixed on Orion's Belt.

He heard a noise coming from the living room: it caught his attention and made him open his eyes. A background hum, continuous and annoying, like the sound of interference on a phone line.

Marco steered his wheelchair as quickly as possible towards the living room.

‘What the hell …?' he exclaimed, seeing a full-screen image on his laptop.

The video transmission was patchy, interrupted by black-and-white horizontal lines moving up and down. The view was of a black leather armchair. Behind it, a wooden plank, held up by a couple of sawhorses, was covered with piles of papers and books.

An old man walked into view in front of the lens and sat down. The faint light in the room gleamed off his bald head as he buttoned a jumper all the way up to his neck.

With his eyes focused on the camera, he started talking.

‘The Multiverse is about to be destroyed.'

This must be him
, Marco thought to himself, and then the man started speaking again.

‘Memoria exists.'

Becker paused, looking around. The connection was very choppy. The image appeared and disappeared jerkily, and suddenly went dark.

‘At the very moment in which our consciousness is eliminated, Memoria will be the last and only alternative.'

What does that mean?
Marco wondered.

‘The last days are approaching.'

A shiver ran down his spine as the screen went black again after Becker's brief message. The window shut itself and gave way to the computer's desktop background, a photo of the American flag being planted on the moon's surface.

‘The last days …' Marco repeated in a monotone, staring into the air. Then he grabbed the mouse, opened the program again, and searched through its history for the file that he had just watched.

There was no trace of the video.

A quick glance at the block of Post-it notes next to the Mac's keyboard on his desk brought that name to mind again: Memoria.

He picked up his pen and wrote:
At the very moment in which our consciousness is eliminated, Memoria will be the last and only alternative
.

Marco took off his glasses, set them down on his desk, and looked up at the ceiling, frightened and confused. He didn't even realise that he was far more worried about what might happen to his friend than he was about the apocalyptic revelation he'd just heard from the old man.

How the hell can I warn Alex?
he wondered, before turning his wheelchair around to go back to the kitchen. The bread was completely burned. Marco decided to skip his snack and tossed the charred scraps of bread into the rubbish. Then he turned off the kitchen light and steered his wheelchair back to his bedroom.

The last days …
Becker's words kept echoing in Marco's head as he lifted himself with his arms and dragged himself onto his bed. He felt tired, weak, and scared. What Thomas Becker had said sounded like a genuine prophecy.

Seated cross-legged on Altona Beach, Alex was lost in thought. Night was falling: the sun was a huge orange disc sinking beneath the horizon. The ocean was calm, the sky was clear.
Tonight I'll see Orion's Belt again
.

At the same time, Jenny was leaning her head against the aeroplane's porthole window. From time to time she'd glance at the screen. They were showing
The Truman Show
, which she already knew by heart. She was sleepy. She kept yawning, but she still couldn't seem to get to sleep. Her legs were aching and she couldn't wait to land.