The University of Oxford wasn’t much different than his, Yusuf said. Call it a stubborn English resistance to change that spanned universes. He walked me through rolling green botanic gardens and along the River Cherwell, through St. Mary’s Chapel with its curved wooden beams like the bow of a ship, beneath a ceiling the deep blue of a night sky with painted stars. Ornate building exteriors with scrollwork and sculptures of ancient white guys or cloven-hoofed forest spirits guarding the doors. Radcliff Camera, where I was expecting, you know, a video recording device but instead Yusuf waved his arm like an interior designer at a low stone circular building surrounded by a moat of grass.

He ambled over the grass, free from his breakneck pace and stiff shoulders of the Compound. I was laughing and oh wowing a lot, mostly at the sight of this giddy new Yusuf. Here was where scientists discovered the structure of DNA and famous authors I was supposed to know about researched their books, he told me. White scientists and white famous authors. Sometimes, he still couldn’t believe he’d studied and worked at Oxford, with the country flip-flopping every few years about whether immigrants and ethnic minorities were a part of the rich tapestry of the United Commonwealth or if they should go back where they came from because they certainly don’t belong here, excuse you very much. Even if where you came from was a place whose history was, you know, irrevocably fucked by imperialist intervention of the former British Empire. Couldn’t make an empire without breaking a few eggs and all that. Back in our world, some of the adjunct professors had found little barbs to fling his way because he had a permanent faculty spot over them. Because how wonderful it was that someone like him—brown, gay, very much not interested in the words falling out of their mouths—could find a place here over, you know, typical Commonwealth citizens?

If I were Yusuf, I would’ve sipped my tea and asked, “How many papers have you published this term, asshole? Oh, zero?” But he was way more patient than I was and he didn’t need anyone’s approval.

In this universe, a broom closet took the place of his office, though he couldn’t see much else of a difference between the university we walked through and the one he knew so well.

The rest of the city was alien, filled with breathing buildings of glass.