I should say that I thought of Kaori a lot when I tried not to love Yusuf. When I tried to say goodbye. Here on our pink oasis world before I told him the truth and he still wanted to be around me, I’d walk off and commune with the Envisioner, alone, for hours. I wanted some of her cool distance, some of her cracks painted over with gold. I peeked through the glowing web that connected devices across the multiverse. I dropped in and out of the footage each device had recorded like I was shuffling through TV shows. I could feel traces of us in other threads. In that universe we never met. In that other one we broke up and destroyed each other’s lives. In a million others we never even existed because we are small and not that important, even though what I’m doing here maybe radiates out and puts countless other universes in jeopardy.

Each time I made up my mind to surrender, whatever goodbye I’d planned evaporated when I walked back and found Yusuf cross-legged in the sand with a book on his lap. His halo of messy curls. His eyes—glinting behind the replacement glasses he’d lifted from another universe—were somehow surprised to see me each time. Oh, hi.

So, there. I’m sweeping my leaf blower behind the rows of seats in the movie theater and showing you all the trampled popcorn and candy bar wrappers. Kaori was right all along, I knew it, and I’m a selfish piece of garbage. But don’t tell me I didn’t try.

*   *   *

We jumped through the gateway in the Envisioner, landed in knee-deep snow, and I topped over onto my chest, my face cracking through the frozen crust of white. The gateway zipped closed behind us. I pulled back and traces of blood from the scratches on my arms gashed the snow with red.

The cold felt good against my scalding skin and throbbing face, with the tight patch under my eye of what Hassan called a ready-graft—which must’ve meant it was healing the wounds from Figueiredo’s fists. The refreshing feeling lasted all of two more seconds until the bare skin exposed by my shorts and Rui’s short-sleeved shirt registered the holy shit-level of cold. Of course the closest universe that I could feel when I’d touched the Envisioner was home to a frozen Earth, because why would things ever be easy?

We’d landed in some type of featureless storage bay with concrete walls and a huge rolling garage door open behind us, which let snow tumble in on frigid winds. The Envisioner, laced-over with frost, was a hunk of coal against the thick carpet of white. Everything was too quiet, muted by the cold. Just the sound of my heavy breathing and Yusuf’s footsteps as he crunched through the snow.