Episode 19: The Many Lives of Max Peck

The Many Lives of Max Peck

By Martin L. Shoemaker

As I set the coffee cups around my big round oak dining table, I suddenly curse under my breath. I think I’m out of Sweet & Low.

Personally, I don’t care. I prefer sugar. But some of me are on a diet--or at least they were at last month’s lunch. And they prefer Sweet & Low to sugar, Barnaby in particular. I look down at my spreading waistline. I probably should watch my calories, too. But whatever it was that motivated Barnaby to take the plunge hasn’t happened to me.

I head back to the kitchen, stopping to open the oven and check on the roast. It smells just about perfect. Then I open the pantry cupboard to see if there’s any Sweet & Low in the back. I just spot a likely looking pink box when I hear a zap come through the dining room: the sound of me arriving. Then I hear my voice.

“Hey, A.J., you around?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” I say. “Is that you, Rick?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

I was pretty sure Rick would be the first to arrive. My latest calculations show our universes only one Schrodinger apart. That’s the smallest quantum distance two universes can be without collapsing into the same universe.

Rick comes into the kitchen, and I turn and see myself as I might have been. He has less hair than me, and he’s in better shape. He doesn’t need any Sweet & Low. He’s also taller, until I remind myself not to slouch. Rick never slouches.

“Hey, brother.” He comes over and we shake hands. Over time, I’ve learned not to marvel at the sight of two virtually identical hands shaking. But not quite identical: even his hands are more muscular than mine.

“What can I do to help?” he asks.

“The roast is ready to come out.”

Rick looks around. “Where’s the roaster?”

“The roaster?”

“Yeah. It’s like a microwave oven, specifically for roasting meat.”

“Why would you have a special appliance just for roasting?” I ask. “The roast is in the oven, right there next to the sink.”

He looks down. “Oh! Down below. That’s odd.”

The differences between universes are very small, at least the universes that we can reach. If they were larger, it would take too much energy to cross that many Schrodingers. But still sometimes those differences surprise me.

“You must eat a lot of meat, huh, Rick?”

“Yeah. Pretty much everybody’s gone full Paleo, especially now that they have the meat lines to meet the demand.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” my voice says from the kitchen entry.

I look over. “Ellery!” Rick says to the me in the entryway. “I didn’t even hear you come in.” Sometimes the Door is quieter than others, especially if it’s already charged up from a recent crossing.

Ellery comes in and shakes our hands. Then he says, “Here, bro, let me get it.” He opens the oven, grabs a set of oven mitts without having to ask where they are, and pulls the roast pan out.

Ellery’s universe is three Schrodingers away from mine and along a different axis entirely from Rick’s. Yet Ellery and I are virtual twins. The only difference we have found so far between us is when one of us hosts our monthly luncheons. I won the coin toss last month, so I’m preparing lunch today and he’s not. Otherwise our lives are indistinguishable. It’s a little uncanny how me’s in two different universes can travel such identical life paths. It’s enough to make me doubt free will, but I’m not ready to give up on that concept yet.

Rick puts the biscuits in the oven just as I hear a zap, followed by another zap. Ellery pokes his head back into the dining room. “Rockford. Banacek. Good to see you.” Then he turns back to me. “Hey, A.J., were we expecting anybody else today?”

I check the remote screen on my refrigerator. “Umm... Two more are within range that we know of. Magnum and Barnaby. Pretty far away, though, so it’ll take longer for them to line up the jumps.”

By this point, I have forgotten why I came into the kitchen in the first place. Then I look back and remember the pink box. I grab it, I check to make sure the coffee isn’t burning, and I head back into the dining room.

“Hey, guys, good to see you,” I say.

Rockford nods when he sees the pink box. I kind of understand why he’s on a diet. He’s carrying a lot more weight than any of us. Banacek, on the other hand, lives up to his namesake: trim, fit, and wearing an excellently tailored suit. In his universe, he has earned a whole lot of money from patents related to the Door. The rest of us have tried to reproduce his results; but something in the physics there is just a little off, and the same technologies just don’t work in our universes. In fact, Rick still bears the scars of his own experiments.

In the rest of our universes, the Door technology has so far proven to be an amusement with no practical value. Yes, it lets people step from one universe to another, but only if there’s a Door on each end and only if the universes are fairly similar. So, what benefits does the Door offer? Trade? We all have the same things to trade. An escape from a dying world? That’s a classic science fiction plot, but none of our worlds are dying. The same for a release valve from over population: the populations of our worlds are pretty similar; and besides, it hardly seems right to solve your problems by shoving them off to another universe. Yes, of course, there’d be the simple scientific value; but my peers in the physics community have already written me off as a crackpot from my earlier efforts. I tried to discuss the Door technology with a few peers, but all that did was convince them that I was playing some elaborate trick.

Call me selfish (I’ve said the same now and then), but I’ve kept it to myself. The only practical use I’ve found for it so far is that it gives me people I can talk with who understand my work, who understand me, and yet are just different enough to make me think. Someone who knows you really well but has a perspective that’s just a Schrodinger or two off can see answers that you might have missed.

Rick comes out behind me with the roast pan and sets it in the middle of the table. “Hey, Rick,” Rockford and Banacek say in unison.

We all wince at that. We hate it when that happens.

“Hey guys,” Rick says, “your timing’s just about perfect. Ellery says the biscuits need about ten minutes, so we’ve got some time for some coffee--or something stronger for those of you who are into that.”

Rick himself is an alcoholic. The only one of us but watching him struggle has convinced me that I don’t need to start drinking so early in the day. Lunch is way too soon.

But Banacek never let that stop him, so I bring out the decanter of cognac to fill his glass. Then I pour coffee for the rest of us. We all like cream, most of us like sugar or Sweet & Low, and I know how each one likes it. So, I pour and stir.

Everyone sits at the table except Ellery, who’s in watching the biscuits, just like I would be if he weren’t already doing it. We start talking about trivial things, what’s been going on in the last month.

Magnum asks, “We’re missing somebody. Shouldn’t Barnaby be here by now?”

“He’s a really long ways away, Magnum,” I say. “But yeah, I’d thought he’d have reached us by now.”

The sound of the oven timer dinging almost covers the sound of the zap from the Door. We all look over as the pale gray portal suddenly becomes an opening into a room that is almost a mirror image of this one, only without the dining room table set and no one sitting at it. And Barnaby, standing in the Doorway. He’s in his best suit, overdressed for this party. He comes forward, only he’s not walking.

He’s stumbling, falling, face first onto my carpet.

As the Door zaps shut behind him, we all look down at the large kitchen knife sticking out from his back.

“Damn!” Five voices say in unison. We all leap up from the table to go look at him.

Magnum is there first, checking his pulse. “Guys. Barnaby’s dead.”

Ellery, not having heard the excitement, comes in at that moment with a loaded tray and asks, “Anyone for biscuits?” But I can see on our faces that we’ve all lost our appetite.

“Jesus!” Rick says. “He just... He just fell through.”

“Did he fall?” I ask. “I thought he took a step.”

“Hard to say,” Banacek says. “My back was to the door. He was on the ground by the time I turned around.”

Rockford says, “Same here.”

“So we’ve got two abstentions, one step, one fell. Magnum, what do you say?”

“I was looking at his face, not his feet, but his eyes were closed. And guys, his wrist is cold. He’s been dead for a while.”

“Now what?” Rockford asks.

“Geez,” Magnum says. “Maybe we should go home.”

“And what?” I ask. “Leave me with a dead body? My dead body?”

“No,” Rick says. “I guess we can’t call the police. This would be a tough one to explain.”

“No police,” I agree, “but nobody’s going home either.”

“What?” Banacek asks.

I explain, “Our worlds are close enough together in how we live that if Barnaby was a target, any of us could be, too. If ever there was safety in numbers, I’d say this is it.”

“So what do we do?” Rockford asks.

Ellery, having set down the biscuits once he figured out what was going on, stands over Barnaby’s body and says, “We solve the crime.”

“What?” I say. “We’re not detectives.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “but we’re scientists. We’re trained in observation and logic. And we grew up watching the classic detectives on TV. We can’t call the police, A.J.’s right, and I don’t think we should go home. So this is up to us.”

“All right,” Banacek says. “If we’re going to do this thing, we have to do it right. This is a crime scene. Magnum, let go of the body. We need to back off and look for evidence. We’ve already disturbed some of it, but hopefully we can still figure something out. So everyone stand up and back away. Let’s get some pictures and some visual observation notes.”

Magnum settles Barnaby’s wrist on the floor, and then he stands up. The rest of us do as well, and we back away.

Rockford asks a question that’s obvious as soon as he says it. “How do we even know this is Barnaby? We don’t know how many of us there are out there.”

“Good question,” Rick says. “But for now, I’m assuming it’s him. It had to be one of us who knew about the Door technology, and had it tuned for A.J.’s Door here. And look,” he pulls up the records from the Door, “he came from Barnaby’s universe. Prima facie evidence that this is Barnaby.”

I ask, “So somebody killed him and left him propped against the Door, waiting for it to activate?”

“Yep.”

Ellery nods. “So somebody in Barnaby’s universe must know about the Door. There’d be no other reason for propping a corpse up like that.”

“Like what?” I ask.

Ellery grabs a yardstick from my desk. “Look,” he says. He pokes very carefully at Barnaby’s face, lifting it just slightly out of the way. “There’s a cord around his neck. And look here, a hook. Somebody hung the corpse on the Door interface and when the interface disappeared, all the vector forces acting on the body were in the inward direction. He fell right through.”

Ellery lets the head back down. Before he can pull the ruler away, Banacek says, “Wait. Lift him up again.”

None of us are thrilled about this. Banacek’s face is particularly pale. On TV shows, some detectives are pretty squeamish about touching a dead body, while others get coldly used to it. But none of them ever had to deal with their dead body.

Ellery pries the head up again, and Banacek says, “Look on the collar. That magenta stain.”

Magnum bends lower and looks. “Lipstick.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Banacek says. “Meredith’s color.”

“Meredith?” I ask. “Why would Barnaby have the maid’s lipstick on his collar?”

Rick asks, “Maid?”

“Yeah, Meredith, my maid.”

“Um,” Rick says, “I can tell you, brother, I’ve had a little bit of her lipstick on my collar as well. Meredith may be a maid in your universe, but in my universe, she’s a spitfire.”

“You’re dating our maid?” I ask.

“If you want to call it dating...” he answers. “But no, she’s not the maid. She’s a former client.”

“No,” Magnum says, “she’s my accountant. And my girlfriend sometimes.”

“My maid,” Ellery says.

“My ex-wife,” Rockford says.

“My girlfriend,” Banacek says, “and my research partner.”

“Partner?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers, “she’s on most of those patents that I’ve got.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that?” Magnum asks.

“I guess I assumed you all had the same arrangement,” Banacek answers. “But now...”

“But now, we have seven Meredith’s,” I say. “Or at least we’re inferring one from the lipstick on Barnaby’s collar. Odd... We’re all pretty much alike, just little differences here and there. But it sounds like Meredith’s pretty different in every one of our universes. Or...” I stop, open my tablet, go back through my accounting records, and find her employment application. “Is she still Meredith, the same woman for all of you?”

I hold up my tablet, showing a picture of Meredith as I know her: a tall, thin, good looking blonde with a slight grin on her face even though she was trying to be serious for the photo. Yeah, she’s attractive enough, but I just never even considered her that way. It’s not good to get involved with the help.

Okay… I idly fantasized about it, but that’s not the same thing.

The others pass the tablet around. Each nods.

“Yep, that’s her.” Rockford nods.

“All right,” I say. “We all have a Meredith in our lives: same woman, completely different roles; and at least in the case of Barnaby, it looks like they were romantically involved. And also for some of you.”

“Um hmm,” Banacek and Rockford say.

“That has to mean something,” I continue, “but about the murder, or about the entanglement of parallel universes is another question.”

“So now what do we do?” Ellery asks. “We can’t just leave him there bleeding all over your floor.”

“He’s not bleeding,” Magnum points out. “He’s been dead too long. There’s probably a good puddle on the floor back in his universe.”

“Should we go back and see?” Ellery asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “We don’t know what’s in this universe, but we know there’s a killer in that one. A killer who knows about the Door. If the body’s cold, the killer has probably been gone a long time, but maybe they’ll come back.”

“But we can look,” Banacek argues. “We’re only looking at half the crime scene now. We can hold the Door open and stand on this side.”

“Hold the door open?” I ask. “How?”

“You don’t know how to hold the Door open?” he says.

I shake my head. So do the others. “How?”

“I see,” he says. “Another place my research has taken me ahead of the rest of you.” He opens the control panel next to my Door and looks at the circuits. “Yeah, you’re wired up right for it. All it’s going to take is a little reprogramming and a lot more energy. The cost is exponentially more the longer you hold it open. How’s your electric bill looking, A.J.?”

“It’s okay,” I answer. “I use my backup generator a lot, so no one picks up on my actual usage.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Rockford says. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

“You did,” I answer, “just not in your universe.”

Banacek closes the panel and plugs his tablet into it. “All right,” he says, “let me do a little quick reprogramming. First, I’ll check your electrical schematics.” He pulls up the wiring plan for the building. “I can give us about eight seconds before we overload your wiring and start the building on fire.”

“Can we go for seven?” I say. “I really don’t need an insurance claim. Not to mention if the fire department shows up, we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Banacek agrees. “Seven it is. Now we’ve all got tablets with hi-def video and audio recording, so we’ll each set up with a different angle and record the scene for seven seconds. Here...” He draws a picture, showing us each what our areas will be. “I’ll be ready to shut the Door immediately if there’s any threat coming at us. Places, everybody.” We gather around the Door, and Banacek continues, “I’ll be opening the Door in three... two... one...”

The Door opens again onto Barnaby’s nearly identical room, and I start panning my tablet’s camera over the lower right quadrant; but I don’t need to scan the whole seven seconds to know that I’ve already got our next clue: Meredith’s dead body in disarray on the floor with a butcher knife sticking out of her breast.

“Meredith,” I say, and I step towards the Door.

But Magnum grabs my arm and pulls me back. Ellery has my other arm. “No guys,” Ellery says, “stick to the plan.”

Already half of our seven seconds are gone, and I fumble to focus my tablet back on the scene. It’s not my Meredith... at least, not as I’ve ever seen her. When she comes over for the weekly cleaning, she’s almost always dressed in the same thing: faded blue jeans and a sloppy blue sweatshirt, hair pulled back by a bandana. Maybe attractive in a very practical way, but really different from this Meredith.

This one is in a sleeveless dress, revealing more ample cleavage than the sloppy sweatshirt had ever indicated. She’s also wearing high heels, not the practical tennis shoes that my Meredith always wears. She’s elegantly made up as well. My Meredith never wears makeup when she’s cleaning. I’ve never noticed that she didn’t, but now the contrast is striking. I have only a moment to note that her lipstick matches the shade on Barnaby’s collar, and then the Door closes.

I look around at me. We’re all shaken, but some of us are positively ashen. They’re the ones who had a relationship with their Meredith. That’s two awful shocks in less than ten minutes: your own death, and then your lover’s. It hits me hard, so I can imagine how it’s hitting them.

“Come on, guys,” I say, “let’s sit down. We need a breather.”

We return to the lunch table. No one’s going to touch the roast today, I can see that. Then I get up from the table at the same time Ellery does. Our eyes meet, and I know we’re thinking the same thing, as usual. I go back in the kitchen and get the coffee pot while he heads to the liquor cabinet and gets the Irish Whiskey. What everyone needs is to be alert but numb. We pour the Irish Coffee for everyone but Rick. Then we all sit quietly sipping our drinks.

Finally, Rockford breaks the silence. “Now I’m worried about my Meredith.” The others nod. “We haven’t gotten along in years. But still, she was the one. No other woman’s ever compared. There’s only one Meredith.” Then he looks up, “Well, one for me anyway.”

“Are we looking at this all wrong?” I ask. “Barnaby and Meredith were both killed. Maybe it’s some threat unique to their universe, and the rest of us are safe. Some random killer, or some enemy of Barnaby that the rest of us have never met.”

“I don’t think so,” Ellery says. “Remember, the body hung from the portal. That had to be somebody who knew. And besides...” He scribbles some quick calculations on his tablet. “I think if Barnaby were randomly dead, that would be enough of a difference to jump his universe another Schrodinger out. If it hasn’t jumped away, then I think that means that he’s still entangled with us. Banacek, can you check my math?”

Ellery sends his notes to Banacek’s tablet. Banacek looks down at them, but his eyes don’t really seem to focus. He just blinks at the screen for a few seconds, and then says, “That looks right. Something about these deaths has kept us entangled with Barnaby’s universe.”

“So do any of us have an idea what that could be?” I ask. “Because I sure don’t. I hope one of you is smarter.” Again, we sit in silence. None of us is smarter than me, I guess.

Our ruminations are interrupted by the chime of my doorbell. I open the door cam on my tablet, and I see Meredith out there. “She’s early,” I say.

“What?” Magnum asks.

“Meredith. She’s scheduled to show up and clean up after lunch today--three hours after lunch to give you plenty of time to get out of here.”

“This isn’t good,” Rockford says.

“Yeah,” Rick says, “we’ve got one Meredith dead, and another arriving when we don’t expect her.”

“She could be...” I pause in thought. “What? Going to commit suicide on my floor? I’ll keep the butcher knives away.” The doorbell chimes again. “I’ll be right down,” I say to the tablet.

I get up from my chair, but Rockford grabs my arm. “You know this could be a setup,” he says. “You know it always was in the TV shows. You go to the door, and two thugs slug you and point a gun at your head.”

“The TV shows didn’t have door cams,” I answer.

“All right,” Rick releases my arm. “But be careful.”

Halfway down the stairs, I hear footsteps behind me. It’s Ellery. “What’s up, bro?” I ask.

“You know what they say. Many eyes lead to few bugs. I want to see what’s going on.”

“We don’t want her to see two of us.”

“I know. I’ll watch through the security camera. She won’t see me.”

I like his idea. I would’ve come up with it myself if I were in his shoes. I let Ellery go down first and stand by the monitor, and then I go to the door. “Chain on or chain off?” I ask.

“That’s silly,” he answers. “That’ll make her more suspicious. She has a key, after all. If she were coming to attack you, she could’ve let herself in.”

I open the door. Meredith stands there, dressed in her usual cleaning outfit. Despite the situation, I catch myself noticing her shape under the sweatshirt, and wondering why I never noticed it before. I shake my head and look away. “Meredith I--”

Before I can get another word out, she interrupts. “Max... Mr. Peck...” Finally, she thrusts a piece of paper at me. “My resignation, and my bill for the last week’s work. You can deposit it in my account. I won’t be cleaning here anymore.”

Meredith turns to walk away. This can’t be a coincidence, Rockford’s right on that. When multiple odd events happen at the same time, look for a possible correlation. I reach to grab her arm, but that would be wrong. I don’t know the relationship the others have with their Meredith’s, but this one and I have never touched beyond a handshake when we formalized the cleaning agreement. Instead I just say, “Meredith, wait.”

“Max,” she says, “I’m going.”

“Meredith, I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

She turns back, and her eyes flare. “What’s wrong? After you... And I... And we... And then we... And you never even called after! Not until this morning, you called to confirm my appointment. As if I were just a maid!”

I don’t say, But you are just a maid, but that’ s what I’m thinking. In this universe. “Meredith, slow down.”

“You didn’t slow down last week! You were in a hurry to leave then. That was the time to slow down and talk; but no, you had to go. You had your chance, Max, and you blew it.” She turns to storm away, and then she turns back again. “Oh, and you can have these too. I don’t want anything to remind me of you.” She hands me a zippered bag. Before I can even look at what’s in it, she storms off. This time she just keeps going.

I close the door, and Ellery comes over. “Well, you heard,” I say.

“Did you notice anything?” he asks.

“You mean besides she’s pissed?”

“Yeah, besides that, genius. Didn’t you notice?” He shakes his head. “No, I guess you were caught up in the conversation. A.J., she had makeup on.”

“She never does.”

“Mine doesn’t either,” he continued, “but she cleaned up pretty good. I think she was hoping to convince you to give her a second chance.”

“We never had a first chance.”

“She and you didn’t,” Ellery says, “but it sounds like she and somebody did.”

“One of us,” I say.

“Yes, one of us. This just got a lot more complicated.”

I frown. “I never make unscheduled jaunts to the other universes.”

“Neither do I,” Ellery answers.

I consider it an unspoken agreement between us since you can’t know when there might be a visitor. We don’t want word to get out.

I say, “So one of us slipped through and had a dalliance with Meredith. And if he slipped through into my universe, who’s to say he didn’t slip into yours?”

“Or Barnaby’s,” Ellery says. “Damn. One of us up there could be our killer.”

I’m thinking the same thing, and that’s why I don’t suspect Ellery. We’re too entangled in too many ways.

Oh, I know how it goes in old TV plots. The person you least suspect turns out to be the killer. But this isn’t fiction, it’s physics. We’ve done the measurements. Aside from the coin toss that decides who’s hosting the lunch, Ellery and my lives keep collapsing back to almost identical paths, almost identical thoughts. I could no more believe Ellery was the killer than I could believe I was.

But if you’d asked me twenty minutes ago, I’d have said the same thing about all my other selves. Now I had no choice but to consider who it could be.

“So, what’s that?” Ellery asks.

I look down at the plastic bag. “I think he tried to ply her with gifts.”

“If he did, we’re pretty cheap bastards,” Ellery says. We kind of are, except for Banacek. All our money has to go into keeping our research going.

I open the bag and dump the contents on the table. There’s a wristwatch, rather shiny and sparkly. But it’s probably gilded, the density is wrong for real gold.

There’s a folded-up note. I open it, and it says, “To Meredith, the loveliest woman in this or any universe. Max.”

There’s a stub of a ballet ticket. That surprises me. Ballet isn’t my thing; so, whoever he was, he must’ve known that it was Meredith’s thing.

And there’s a tube of lipstick. The dark magenta dot on the end tells me what I expected: it’s the shade from Barnaby’s collar.

“That’s what she was wearing just now,” Ellery says. I pick it up and look at it. The label on the bottom says Night Embrace by Davenport Cosmetics, Pottsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Pottsburgh?” I say.

“It’s Pittsburgh in my universe,” Ellery says.

“Same here. So, there’s an absolutely glaring clue, but how can we use it? Go upstairs and say, ‘Hey guys, what’s that steel city in Pennsylvania?’”

“We could, you know,” Ellery says. “Surprise them. Did you know there was a Pottsburgh? Or did you just assume Pittsburgh?”

“It’s news to me,” I say.

“Same as me,” he continues, “so whoever he is, he might assume it’s just Pottsburgh everywhere.”

“We could try it,” I say. “What have we got to lose?”

“Well, what we have to lose is the element of surprise once we start asking odd questions. We’re pretty smart. We’ll know, meaning all of us, that something’s up.”

I shake my head. “I think it’s simpler just to put all our cards on the table.”

“And if one of us is a deranged killer?” Ellery asks.

“He’ll probably keep quiet because he’s as smart as we are. But if he gets violent, there’ll be five of us to one of him. We can handle him.”

We go back up the stairs. Rick looks at me. “Is everything all right, A.J.?” Then he looks around sheepishly. “I mean, all right under the circumstances?”

I shake my head, “No Rick, it’s not.” I set the zippered bag next to the plate of roast. “I’m not going to play games here, because any one of you is as smart as me, so here goes. One of you has been bed-hopping across dimensions.”

“What?” Magnum says.

“No,” Rockford says.

Banacek stares at the bag “And what’s this?”

“Evidence. Little gifts one of you gave to Meredith in this universe.”

“I damn sure didn’t,” Rockford says.

“You’re kidding, A.J.,” Rick says.

I answer, “She was upset I hadn’t called her back after our last tryst, because I haven’t had the pleasure that one of you did. We can go through complicated logic games to try to prove who it was, see if we can outsmart one another. Eventually, we’ll work that out, but we’ll waste a lot of time getting there. So why don’t we cut to the chase? Which one of you lives in a universe with Pottsburgh, Pennsylvania in it? Which of you has been sleeping around with Meredith?”

Banacek’s face is ashen. “Do you mean the rest of you don’t have Pottsburgh?”

“No,” I say. “It’s Pittsburgh here.”

The rest of them nod.

Banacek stares into his mug, “I didn’t kill him.”

“We haven’t accused you of it,” I answer. “Yet.”

He sighs. “All right... I’ve been visiting your universes at unscheduled times, generally when I was pretty sure you’d be asleep. Then I went out and explored.”

I ask, “And you just happened to end up at my maid’s apartment?”

“Oh, no,” he answers. “No, I’m not going to lie. I pursued her quite deliberately.”

I half rise. “What the hell, Banacek?”

“It’s just so easy. I was just a little lonely, you know?”

“Wait a minute? I thought you and your Meredith were a couple?”

“Not anymore,” he says. “But this was before that. I just had the idea one day, and I couldn’t see a reason why not.”

Magnum asks, “How about it’s a shitty thing to do to your brother selves to mess up what’s going on in their universes?”

“I didn’t expect it to be an issue,” Banacek answers.

“Oh, come on,” Magnum continues, “we’re not that stupid.”

“It was a thrill,” Rick says. “You were getting away with something.” We all look at him and we all realize he is right. He just got there faster.

I can see it now. Me, I haven’t had many relationships, so sex by itself would be plenty thrilling for me. But it’s human nature that dangerous sex is more exciting when you get jaded to... the regular stuff. “You wanted to get caught,” I say.

“Not wanted,” Banacek answers, “but you know... It added a little thrill. And a little variety. We’re enough alike that people could easily confuse us, but Meredith... She’s a different woman in every universe, so it was an adventure figuring out what the differences were. What would appeal to her. What would win her over. What she liked better in bed. And you know, it was like cheating on my Meredith, but not cheating at the same time. At least, that’s how I saw it.”

“And she didn’t?” I ask. He shakes his head? “Then why did you tell her, you blooming idiot?”

“I...” He buries his hands in his face. “I suggested to her that she might come with me, and we could hook up with another of her, and how fun that could be.”

“Yeah, fun,” Rockford says. “I can just see my ex-wife going for that.” Then he shakes his head. “No, I can’t. I can just see my ex-wife throwing me out of the house all over again over that.”

Ellery looks at Banacek, “So your Meredith broke up with you when you suggested that?”

“Yes.”

“And your Meredith,” Magnum says, “is the only one that we know of who knows about the Door technology.”

“Helped advance it even,” Ellery says. “She must understand it pretty well.”

Banacek mutters into his hands, “She does.”

“All right,” I say, “I’m not involved with Meredith. I don’t know her that well. For those of you who do, is she the jealous type?” Banacek sinks lower in his chair.

“Yes,” Rockford says. “Definitely. Of course, I gave her reasons, but she threw a brick through my girlfriend’s windshield.”

“Yep,” Magnum says. “It’s one of the reasons we never married. I’m just... You know. She’s fun to be with, but sometimes a little unstable.”

I stand up and lift Banacek back into his seat, pulling his hands away from his face. “You’ve suspected since you saw Meredith’s body, haven’t you?”

“I didn’t think...”

“Yeah, you did,” I say. “So, she followed you to Barnaby’s universe.”

“And from the looks of it,” Ellery says, “found the two of them together. They were dressed for a night out.”

“He probably tried to calm her down,” Rockford says, “and that pushed her over the edge.”

“Did it?” I ask. “Or did she plan it?”

“I don’t think she did,” Rockford says. “Look at the knife in Barnaby’s back.” I go back to check the body. “Does it look familiar?” he asks.

“Yep, I’ve got a couple like that in my kitchen,” I answer. “She didn’t plan this. She just grabbed the weapons that were at hand. It looks like a crime of passion. But can we be sure?”

“It was a crime of passion this time,” Ellery says. “But Banacek is right. There’s a thrill in getting away with something. She’s unstable. She could kill again.”

“Oh, come on,” Magnum says. “You don’t know that. That sounds like a TV show. This is real life.”

“Is it?” Rockford asks. “Can we take that chance?” He turns to Banacek. “Look, you know this technology better than the rest of us. Yeah, you had some help, but you’ve still got the skills. So tell me something, could she have another Door to our universes?”

“It is theoretically possible,” Banacek says. “But in actuality, no, not possible at all.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“It only worked for us because each of us in our own separate universes at the same time put up Doors on the same wall in essentially identical houses. We were entangled enough that we collaborated without having ever met each other.

“But Meredith...” He continues. “There’s only one of her that knows the Door technology. She couldn’t unconsciously collaborate with the rest of our Meredith’s. No, if there is a Door besides ours, it’s not one she built. The odds against that would be... cosmological.”

“All right,” Magnum says. “Rigor mortis hasn’t hit Barnaby yet. That means he has been dead less than... Four hours?”

Rockford nods.

“A.J., have you left the house this morning?”

“Nope.”

“Any of you?” Magnum asks. Four heads shake. “So, she hasn’t come back to any of our homes or universes. Banacek, not even yours?”

“No,” Banacek answers. “She must still be in Barnaby’s universe.”

Magnum continues. “So, a crazed mad woman is at least temporarily locked away where she can’t possibly get to us or to any Meredith. Banacek, how can we keep her there?”

“I think we already have our answer from earlier,” he answers.

“What?” I ask.

He explains, “We talked about the risk of a fire destroying your house and what a loss that would be, but it’s more than that.”

“In theory,” Rockford says, “she could rebuild the house in the same spot, and rebuild the Door. It would take time, probably never happen, but it’s not impossible.”

“Oh, I think it’s impossible enough,” Banacek says. He gets up and starts pacing. “I’m thinking through the math. A change like that, it would push Barnaby’s universe away. There must already be a strain with two of her there. That has potential causality conflicts, we’ve measured those before. The destruction of the Door, well...” He scratches a few lines on his tablet. “I don’t think she can get enough energy to jump that many Schrodingers.”

“So what?” I ask. “We burn Barnaby’s house down?”

“And him and his Meredith with it, I’m afraid. You don’t want someone asking about your own dead twin. And if he’s back in his universe, that will make the disentangling happen more easily.”

“So how do we do this?” I ask. “Go over there and torch the place? Spread gasoline around?”

Banacek shakes his head. “I think just like we discussed before: we overload the electrical system. An electrical fire will spread through the house, especially if we shut down the fire suppressant system first.”

So that’s what we set out to do. First, we grab Barnaby’s arms and legs as impromptu pallbearers, while Banacek operates the Door. It won’t be the first time I’ve been in Barnaby’s universe, of course, but the circumstances are significantly less festive today.

“Where should we put him?” Magnum asks.

“I’d kind of want to be in the bed myself,” Rockford answers.

“Yeah,” Rick says, “but if there’s an accident and a fire investigation, it’s probably better that he’s near where he was actually killed. They’ll figure out that he didn’t die in the fire, and she didn’t either. That’s inevitable. It will just be a mystery that they’ll never be able to solve, because we’ll have left their universe.”

“All right,” I say, “let’s just set him down on the other side.”

And that’s what we do. When the Door opens, we carry Barnaby through. When the Door zaps closed, we unceremoniously set him on the floor.

I try not to look at Meredith. She gives me the shivers. I wonder how much like my Meredith she was. And how much unlike. It’s a good thing that Meredith quit being my maid. There’s temptation there that I don’t need, and risks there that I definitely don’t need.

“Now what?” I ask.

Banacek stands at the panel by Barnaby’s Door. “You all get back through. I’ll hold the Door open for ten seconds. If that doesn’t start a massive fire, I don’t know what will.”

I ask, “Can’t you make it automatic, so you can come through with us?”

“You know how it always goes in the exciting conclusion,” he says. “You’ve got to have that last-minute countdown, and the doubts: is he going to make it or not? What kind of a nail biter would it be without that?” Then he smiles. “I’ll be fine, but no, we can’t automate this.”

He opens the Door again, and all but Banacek go back through. His tablet ticks down the seconds.

At eight, there’s a popping, crackling sound.

At nine, I see smoke coming from the far wall.

At ten, I hear a whoosh from the direction of Barnaby’s stairs. “All right, Banacek,” I say. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Banacek shakes his head... and he closes the Door.

“That fool!” Rick says. “Open it back up.”

I stab my own panel. It should be the easiest thing, I’ve been to Barnaby’s universe enough times, but somehow I’m blocked. One more trick that Banacek knows and the rest of us don’t. No matter what I try, the Door won’t open. Soon the dimensional compass can no longer lock onto Barnaby’s Door. I spin the controls looking for it, but it’s nowhere to be found.

“He increased the paradox,” Ellery says. I look at him blankly, and he continues, “There will be two dead Max Pecks when the fire department investigates. With the house gone, the Door gone, an unsolved mystery, and a crazy Meredith still running around doing God knows what, it’s a completely different universe now.”

“He made sure she can’t come after anybody else,” I say.

“And he atoned for his sins,” Magnum says.

I look around at my face staring at me from four other bodies. “Well, my appetite is completely gone. I can pour more drinks if anyone wants.”

Magnum shakes his head. “I’d better get home to see how Meredith is doing.”

“Yeah,” Rockford says. “I haven’t looked up mine in a while. I was awfully hard on her. I wonder what I might have pushed her to. I have some making up to do, I think.”

Both of them dial in their own universes and step through the Door. Rick steps up to the panel behind them. “Next month, bro?”

“We forgot to flip the coin,” I said.

“That’s okay, my place will do.” Rick opens the Door and steps through; and then I’m alone with myself, Ellery, the closest thing I have to a twin in this entire multiverse.

“Did it have to be this way?” I say.

“I think it did,” he says. “I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that my stupid philandering had caused so much death and put the rest of us at risk. Could you?”

I shake my head, and Ellery dials in his universe code and vanishes through the Door.

But I never actually answered the question. Could I live with that?

I’m relieved that I don’t have to find out.

THE END