In the infinite bathtub of the multiverse there are a million universes where me and Yusuf haven’t met yet. I wish them better luck than we’ve had.

Now, a ways down the pink sand, waves brush against the shore. I know I’m doing this all wrong.

I wish Yusuf was here so I could say, “Hey, look at me trying to wrap my head around what you taught me and apply it to a theory of my own that is probably both wildly inaccurate and over-simplified.”

I know this isn’t the way that Yusuf wanted me to think about time when he probably meant, like, to think about how insignificant he—or anyone—is in the big picture. Which is why I have to let him go.

24

CRYSTAL OXFORD

The shimmering crystalline snake thing that slid towards us on glowing tracks might have been called a train by some people, but I was not one of them. Doors on its side whispered open like a monster bug inhaling and Yusuf and I jostled our way into the crowded belly. Next stop Oxford Center, a soothing overhead voice informed us, before terminating at London Paddington five minutes later.

Yusuf didn’t even have a chance to finish explaining what propulsion technology this world had to shrink the travel time of fifty-something miles to five minutes before the city of Oxford shimmered into view.

Oxford was a fantasy of stone and crystal, of ancient-looking buildings flecked with moss among blocky clear towers, lit a pale blue from the inside. The city center looked more like a cracked-open geode you’d see at a natural history museum and less like something people would build, never mind live in.

“It’s… so different,” Yusuf murmured in awe.

I pressed close to him in the crowd of the train. Back in the Compound, he talked about bouncing from country to country with his family, thanks to his dad’s job as a Peacekeeper for the UN. I know if any place on Earth felt like home it was Oxford, which changed the course of his life—where he studied, and worked, and met Kaori. This city, this whole world, wasn’t his real home. He’d never get back there because of me.

The train slid to a stop and the crowd gushed past us onto the platform of crystal-flecked concrete. And the city beyond—a chessboard of stone and crystal pieces waiting for a giant hand from the sky to make the next move.

“Come on,” I said, laughing. “Show me everything.”

He turned back to me, one corner of his mouth curved upwards, and grabbed my hand. I was projecting my fear and my doubt onto him, with the half-wild way he smiled, like we were back at the Compound again in the early days, and he was at my doorstep with some thin excuse. I hoped. We jumped onto the platform and the train doors closed behind us.

*   *   *