Fair Coin (17 page)

Ephraim examined a framed photograph on Zoe's desk. In it, Nate and Zoe lounged beside Ephraim on the grassy soccer field behind the high school. They were laughing, their arms draped over his shoulders. It could only have been taken a few years ago, maybe freshman year, but they looked happier than the people they'd grown into. He wondered where those careless kids had gone. Had it been the war? Or had everything changed between them once the coin appeared?

Maybe we're still that happy in another universe
, he thought hopefully.

Ephraim turned around. “Did Nate and your Ephraim have a fight?”

Zoe lay back in her bed and stared at the ceiling. “When Ephraim decided to stop using the coin, Nate got furious. He said it wasn't just Ephraim's decision, because it would cut him off from all those universes too. They were in it together, right? Nate actually threatened his family, which obviously didn't go over well.”

“Would Nate have really hurt Ephraim's mom?” Ephraim asked.

Zoe was quiet for a moment. “Oh, I'd say so,” she said softly.

Of course he would. Nate had killed his own duplicate and executed Jena right in front of him.

“That seems to be Nate's standard response,” Ephraim said. “But Ephraim kept working with him after that?”

“He only pretended to. He planned to ditch Nate in another universe, as soon as he had the chance.”

“How did Ephraim expect to get back here without the controller?” Ephraim asked.

“He was going to wait until Nate set the coordinates for the return trip, then take the coin before Nate could touch him.”

“Wow,” Ephraim said. “That's cold.”

“I guess it wouldn't have worked anyway, if Nate's figured out how to track the coin with the controller. He would have come after Ephraim eventually,” Zoe said.

That was true. So Ephraim would have to take the controller from Nate eventually, or he'd just keep following him—and that would put Ephraim's own family and friends in danger.

“There's something else,” Ephraim said. “I've been swapping places with my duplicates in their universes, every time I use the coin.” That's why he hadn't figured out what was causing all the changes around him—he was the only thing being changed.

She drew her arms around herself. “That's disturbing.”

“But why didn't that happen for your Ephraim? He didn't replace me when he came to my universe,” he said. “And Nate coexisted with the native Nathans of all those universes while he was following me.”

“You only had the coin. Maybe the controller keeps you from swapping with your other selves.”

Ephraim sat back down and rested his elbows on his knees. That could be it. When Nate had grabbed him at the fountain, the presence of the controller—what he'd thought was Nate's cell phone—allowed Ephraim to shift to this universe, where he didn't have a double to switch with.

“What was it like? Did you change bodies or was it just your mind that shifted?” Zoe asked.

Ephraim examined his hands in alarm. He hadn't considered that possibility. Was he still in his own body? He hadn't noticed any differences, but he hadn't been looking for any in himself.

He remembered what had happened back at the diner with Mary Morales. “My clothes always went with me. So I think anything in contact with my skin shifts over too.”

“I suppose it doesn't really matter,” Zoe said. “You look about the same as my Ephraim, anyway. If that's any consolation.”

“Easy for you to say. I've been attached to this body for sixteen years.” Ephraim froze as he thought of something else.

“Hey, are you all right?” she asked.

The real consequences of what he'd been doing were finally sinking in. “Basically, all this time I've been knocking other versions of me out of their lives,” Ephraim said.

She waved a hand dismissively. “They probably never even noticed,” Zoe replied. “You didn't realize what was going on and you were the one doing it. Most adjacent parallel universes, and parallel people, only vary slightly from each other.”

“Some of the universes were really different, though. They'd have to be stupid not to notice that something was up.”

Zoe smiled wryly. He'd set her up perfectly for another joke at his expense. But instead she said, “I wouldn't worry about them. You have enough to handle on your own, in this universe.”

But he did worry. Every time he had wished for something good for himself, he had taken it away from another Ephraim. He had made a lot of people suffer—put other versions of himself through hell. What about the Ephraim who came home to find his mother hospitalized for attempted suicide, when she had been a perfect parent the day before? These weren't strangers—he knew exactly what that would feel like.

“How's my mother in this universe?” he asked suddenly.

Zoe's face paled.

He straightened and looked her in the eyes. “What is it?”

“God, I've wondered what I was going to say to him when he came back.” Her voice quavered. “Ephraim, she's dead. She was murdered.”

“This happened after your Ephraim left?”

“They found her a few days later. She was killed the day he disappeared.”

“I have to go to back my apartment—Ephraim's apartment. You know what I mean.”

“Why?”

“I need to know what happened.”

“I just told you! You don't want to see what it's like there. Besides, that's one of the first places Nate will look for you.”

“I can't really avoid him anyway. He followed me across all those universes. He has me right where he wants me now, on his home territory.”

“I'll come with you then,” she said.

Ephraim stared at her. The last time he'd accepted Jena's help, she had ended up dead. “No. I'll be fine on my own.”

Zoe looked ready to argue, but then she shrugged. “Fine. Just remember the curfew. The cops are looking for you.”

“They think he killed his own mother?” Ephraim asked.

“It was suspicious when they couldn't find him, or Nate. But they're also worried that something bad might have happened to you too.”

“I'll be careful. Will I see you tomorrow?”

“I'll meet you here after school. You should probably skip it, stay out of sight. Too many questions after you've been gone for so long.”

“School? But it's summer vacation.”

She snorted. “We haven't had one of those since kindergarten.”

Ephraim shuddered. “This is a horrible, horrible place. Thanks, Zoe. For everything. I know this all sucks for you, too.”

“I didn't do it for you.”

“Can I ask one more favor? Do you have any shoes that'll fit me?” The soles of his feet were sore and black with dirt.

She leaned over the side of the bed and lifted the blanket. She fished around under the bed upside down. A moment later she pulled out first one pink flip flop, then another.

“Thanks.” He slipped into them.

Ephraim wanted to hug her good-bye, but he figured she wouldn't want that from a stranger, even—especially—if he resembled her Ephraim.

Then again, he might have been mistaken. As he closed the door of her bedroom, Zoe suddenly looked very lonely.

Ephraim checked the mailboxes outside his building and was relieved to see that he lived in the same apartment. Even better, his key opened the lobby door.

His apartment door was crisscrossed with yellow police tape. He stripped it away from the locks and shakily inserted his key.

He pushed the door open and stale air washed over him along with a musty, rank smell. He gagged and pulled his sweaty T-shirt up to cover his nose and mouth. His own body odor wasn't much of an improvement.

Ephraim flipped on lights as he moved through the quiet apartment. The distinct stench of rot got worse as he went down the hall. He reached the kitchen and turned on the light.

There were no pills this time, no bottle of alcohol. No body. Just blood—everywhere. Brown, dried patches stained the table and the worn linoleum floor. It speckled the oven and stove like tomato sauce.

Ephraim's legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees on the threshold. Whatever had happened in there couldn't have been suicide. It looked like a massacre.

He bolted for his room and slammed the door against the smell. He collapsed onto the bed, pressed his face into a pillow with his eyes screwed shut.

That woman hadn't been his mother. She was no more related to him than the other Ephraim was. The thought didn't comfort him at all; he couldn't help but think of her as the person he'd known all his life. But who had killed her? And why?

Nate.

Ephraim rolled over and sat up. He wiped his eyes dry then fumbled to turn on the floor lamp by his bed.

Just like everything else in this universe, his bedroom was both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He knew some things there very well: the well-worn books his dad had given him as birthday presents, on the shelf over the desk where they always were; the old stuffed bear Ephraim had insisted on carrying everywhere until he was five; the wooden triceratops skeleton his mother had helped him assemble after his class trip to the American Museum of Natural History.

His furniture was the same, but there were two large widescreen monitors on his desk instead of the thirteen-inch screen he was used to. The computer was gone, likely confiscated by the police, but Ephraim bet it was better than his own refurbished Gateway. Someone had knocked a cardboard box of American Indian arrowheads and rocks onto the carpet, which must be what his double collected instead of coins.

This Ephraim clearly had plenty of money, judging from the LCD TV in the corner, piles of comic books on the floor, and the overstuffed closet filled with clothes, some still with the tags on. Growing up, Ephraim had wanted these things too. He almost felt envious of his double, but then he remembered that the other Ephraim had lost everything that was really valuable—including his life.

He had to get out of here. Not just the apartment, but this universe.

Ephraim turned off the light and stepped back into the hall. He nearly retched again when the smell assaulted him. Now that he knew what it was, it seemed worse than before.

It
was
worse than before. It was stronger on the far end of the hall. There wasn't anything in the bathroom, which only left his mother's bedroom. It would be stupid to go in there. He should just leave now.

Ephraim held his breath and nudged the door open with his toe. It creaked softly and swung away from him, allowing the bathroom light to cast a golden triangle on the bedspread. He pushed the door open the rest of the way. In the dim light Ephraim made out a dark spray of red on the wall and headboard. The cream-colored pillowcase was stiff and soaked a rusty brown.

Someone else had been killed here. Had there been a Jim in his mother's life here, too?

Ephraim spotted a picture frame on the night table. He went inside and turned on the bedside lamp, trying to avoid looking at the bloody bed. He stared hard at the blood-spattered picture.

Ephraim recognized the man in the photograph, even though he hadn't seen him in over seven years. David Scott had his arm around his wife's shoulders, with the other Ephraim standing front center. The picture looked recent—the boy between them looked about fourteen.

If Ephraim's father had stayed with his family in this universe, then the other victim had been…

“Dad?” Ephraim said.

Ephraim sat on a bench at Greystone Park. It was eerily quiet there this time of night, without even the gentle splash of water from the old fountain. He couldn't stay in the apartment where his parents had died, but he wasn't ready to go back to face Zoe again either.

Since he'd learned the coin wasn't really magic, that there would be no miracle solution, Ephraim felt even more powerless and alone.

A twig snapped nearby.
So much for being alone.

With an electric cough, a lamp post near him sputtered to life. Ephraim jumped when he saw a dark shape squatting beneath it. “Who's there?” Ephraim cried. Had Nate been waiting for him here?

The hunched shape unfolded and lengthened. As the shadow shuffled closer, Ephraim saw it was a man, maybe in his forties. He wore a black trenchcoat, had lanky blond hair, and a few days’ worth of stubble. He also looked oddly familiar.

“What are you doing here, kid?” the man said. “Why'd you come back?”

Come back?

The man cocked his head and peered at Ephraim's face, shifting so he didn't block the light from the lamp. “My mistake. I had you confused with someone else.”

“I get that a lot lately,” Ephraim said.

The man sat beside Ephraim on the bench. Ephraim shrank away, but the man didn't stink like the homeless people who usually hung around the park; his clothes even had the fresh smell of detergent to them.

“It's rude to stare,” the man said.

Ephraim yawned. “Sorry.” He rubbed his eyes. “Do I know you?”

The man reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a greasy bag from Twin Donut. He opened it and offered it to Ephraim. “Want?” he asked.

Ephraim hesitated.

“Oh, come on. They're fresh. I bought them this afternoon.”

Ephraim hadn't eaten since that morning. He reached hesitantly into the bag and pulled out a gooey Boston Creme donut. The first bite he took of sugar and dough made him feel instantly hungrier. He scarfed it down in three more bites, barely tasting the warm cream inside. He licked the sticky chocolate from his fingers and reached for another one. Before he could ask, the man gave him the bag.

“Keep it.” The man patted his stomach. “I lost my appetite when you busted into this universe a few hours ago.”

“Thanks,” Ephraim said around a jelly donut. “Wait, what?” Ephraim swallowed an unchewed bite painfully and stared at him. “You noticed that?”

“I'm particularly attuned to quantum shifts,” the man said. “Or at least my stomach is.”

Suddenly Ephraim realized who this was: the man Zoe had mentioned, the one who had given the coin and the controller to this universe's Ephraim and Nate.

Ephraim pulled the coin from his pocket.

The man exhaled. “So you have it now,” he said.

“You know what this is?” Ephraim closed his hand around the coin and sat up straighter. “Can you tell me more about it? How does it work?”

“Slow down, Ephraim. We'll get there.” He scratched his chin, the stubble sounding like sandpaper against his fingers. “Sorry, that is your name, isn't it?”

“Ephraim Scott.”

The man nodded. “So something happened to the other one if you ended up with the coin.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Lucky you.” The man reached over into the bag and absently snagged a donut for himself.

“I thought you said you didn't have an appetite,” Ephraim said.

“Don't need one to eat. Chewing helps me think,” the man said. He chomped into the donut and chewed thoughtfully.

“Did the coin bring you here too?” Ephraim asked.

The man swallowed. “Or vice versa, depending on how you look at it. I was part of a two-person team exploring parallel universes. Then I lost my partner. Since he was the only one who could use the coin, I was stuck here. I waited a long time to find someone who could help me leave.”

“You mean this world's Ephraim and Nate?”

The man narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. I trusted two kids with the most advanced technology this world has ever seen.
That
turned out to be a mistake. Those punks promised to return me to my universe, but then they abandoned me.” He brushed powdered sugar from his black pants.

“But why did you pick them? How did you know they'd be able to use the coin and controller? Unless…” Ephraim leaned closer and scrutinized the older man. His question came out small and weak. “Who are you?”

The man winked. “Well, just so things don't get too much more confusing, you can call me Nathaniel. I never liked that name, but I grew into it.”

Ephraim stared at him, hardly able to believe it. But now that he'd heard it, he knew the man was telling the truth. That was why he'd seemed so familiar. He was looking at a Nathan with another thirty years or so added on.

“You're another Nathan?” he asked.

“Yeah, I'm an analog of your friend. We do have a habit of popping up, don't we?”

“‘Analog’?”

“It's our term for doubles in parallel universes. Genetically we're about as identical as clones, but because of the inherent variations in our environments, we're unique individuals.”

“Like twins who've been separated at birth?”

“That's a good…analogy.” Nathaniel laughed.

Ephraim frowned. “You're Nathan's double? But you're so…old.”

“Thanks, kid. The timeline can differ between some parallel universes—but you need the extra range of the controller to visit those. I suppose technically I'm from one of your possible futures.” Nathaniel chewed another bite of donut. A dab of red jelly stuck to the corner of his mouth.

“Why didn't Nate recognize you?” Ephraim asked.

Nathaniel stuck his tongue out to catch the jelly from his lip. The gesture reminded Ephraim a lot of the friend he'd grown up with.

“Even if he somehow suspected it, his mind would have discounted it and come up with some reasonable explanation,” Nathaniel said. “I think he probably felt a connection, though, which is why he even bothered humoring my claims about a machine that would let him and his friend travel to parallel universes.”

Ephraim weighed the coin in his hand. “So this really is part of some…machine?” He was kind of disappointed that there wasn't anything magical about it, in the fairies and wizards sense, no matter what Jena had said about advanced technology being basically the same thing. No,
Zoe
had just told him that, he reminded himself.

Nathaniel plucked the coin from Ephraim's palm and examined it all over, like he was checking for damage. “Hmm. It needs a charge, but otherwise it's in good shape.”

Nathaniel held it up between his thumb and forefinger. “This is part of a portable coheron drive,” he said. “What we nicknamed the Charon device, since it—”

“Looks like a coin,” Ephraim said. He remembered that in Greek mythology, Charon was the ferryman who helped dead souls cross the river Styx to the afterlife in exchange for a coin.

Nathaniel grinned. “That's right. Scientists are big on wordplay. At least our scientists are. This piece happens to be the most important component of the drive, both the engine and navigational guide all in one, while the controller is more like a recording instrument.”

“What's it for?” Ephraim asked.

“It could be applied to any number of things, but we used the device to explore and catalog parallel universes. Some of them don't even fully exist until they we observe them ourselves—what we call ‘coherence.’”

Ephraim waved his right hand over his head, showing that the last bit of information had gone right over it.

Nathaniel clicked his tongue. “Don't they teach kids basic quantum mechanics these days?”

“I'm a high school student,” Ephraim said. “I suppose in the future kids learn that stuff in first grade.”

“Of course not. That's when they get into classical physics,” Nathaniel replied.

“Right,” Ephraim said. He couldn't tell if Nathaniel was kidding or not. “But what's coherence?”

Nathaniel passed the coin back to him. “There's only a handful of people who really understand all this stuff back in my universe, or claim they do. Honestly, I just know which buttons to press. But the way it was taught to me is that whenever something's about to happen, there's a probability wave associated with that moment, which includes every potential outcome. When the event occurs, those possibilities become realities—splitting into one or more parallel universes.”

“We figured some of that out already. Well, Jena did, and I mostly got what she said.”

“Jena?” Nathaniel looked at Ephraim sharply. “She's here, too?”

“Yes. Sort of. There's a Jena in your world too?”

Nathaniel hesitated, then nodded.

“Is she…okay? You acted, I don't know. Like you didn't expect her to be here or something.” Or didn't want her to be there? Ephraim's Jena—one of them—had just been killed. Had something similar happened in Nathaniel's universe?

“No no. She's fine. Last I saw her anyway,” Nathaniel said.

“Were she and your Ephraim together?” Ephraim asked.

“We're getting way off topic here. You want to know more about the coin, or what?”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry.” Ephraim flipped the coin a couple of times. Then he thought better of it when he considered he was handling a precision machine. How many times had he dropped it already? “So how does it work? I mean, really work?” he asked.

“The disc functions as a gyro—a gyrocompass for the device. Like the navigational tool used on ships to keep them oriented in relation to north and south. Only this disc orients to the quantum coordinates programmed by the controller.”

“And without the controller?”

Nathaniel sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “It's more…complicated. Risky. You can still use the coin, obviously, but the coordinates become completely random depending on the position of the coin.”

“So heads up would take you in a different direction than tails up.”

“Exactly. Though my partner seemed to be able to subtly influence the outcome and decrease some of that randomness, within the parameters of the coin's orientation. Like he had a kind of intuition for it, or vice versa.”

Then maybe the coin—or gyro thing—had used Ephraim's wishes as a guide to the universes visited, just because his mind was clearly focused on what he wanted. But most of it was still up to chance. No wonder things never turned out exactly the way he had expected; it made no difference whether it landed on heads or tails.

“You've run into the other tricky bit already, I imagine. Alone, the coin conserves energy by swapping you with your analog instead of just transporting you to the universe directly,” Nathaniel said. “Like a powersave mode. I've never done it before, but my Ephraim did. It was always inconvenient at best. You use it too often, and the coin loses its charge completely.”

“The analogs I replaced…are they okay?” Ephraim said.

“They were probably confused by the reality shift, if the universe they ended up in is really different from the one they came from. But the process doesn't harm them at all. Physically.” He scratched his chin.

“That's a huge relief. And once the coin is drained, it can be recharged?”

“Yes, but only by plugging it into the controller. And this is especially important: you have to say the oath,” Nathaniel said.

“What oath?” Ephraim asked.

“You know: ‘In brightest day, in blackest night…’”

That sounded very familiar.

He had it. The Green Lantern recited that whenever he recharged his ring in its power battery.
“Really?”
Ephraim asked.

“Nah. But we did it anyway.” Nathaniel grinned.

“Oh.” Apparently older Nathaniel was still a huge comic book geek. Ephraim slid the coin back into his pocket. “I don't think Nate's going to let me charge the coin unless it benefits him somehow.”

“No.” Nathaniel grimaced. “And he'll do whatever it takes to get it away from you, and into the hands of someone who he can manipulate.” Ephraim wondered how this guy knew so much about Nate. Was it just a matter of knowing himself? What had Nathaniel been like at Nate's age?

“Why doesn't the coin work for you or him?” Ephraim asked.

Nathan rubbed his elbow distractedly. “It's a security feature. Having a two-person team ensures that one person can't abuse the technology, and each component is configured for the biometrics of a specific operator. That way, if anyone else comes across the device, they won't be able to use it. But it isn't perfect—the device can't distinguish between subtle variations in users, such as the slight genetic drift you might find in different analogs of the same person. All Ephraims are the same, as far as the coin is concerned.”

“What do you think Nate will do next?” Ephraim asked.

“He's stuck here, so he can't find another Ephraim to take your place. So he'll try to convince you to work with him, and wait for his opportunity to ditch you. Or maybe he'll just kill you. He's a little unstable.”

“I noticed.”

“He won't be able to stand the thought of you having something he can't. Once that coin is recharged, you can get out of here without him.”

Ephraim jumped up. “But if we take the controller away from Nate,
you
could use it! I mean…would you help me get home?” Ephraim looked at him hopefully.