“Are you totally insane? Like fucking sociopathic?” Donnie asked when he arrived at the lab. He was still in pajama pants, his hair a mess, wearing a T-shirt with Einstein on it. “You brought another human into our reality?”

“Twice,” I said.

“Do you have any fucking clue how dangerous that is?”

“Kinda.”

“Kinda?” Donnie said. “Kinda? You could’ve imploded multiple realities.”

“Precisely,” I said. “Take a moment and process that. It worked!” And I kept reminding Donnie that the first human tests had worked, until he relaxed enough to stop panicking. I took the bottle of rum from the file cabinet and poured us two large tumblers while I told him about how Erin and I had walked together through the arb, the branches covered in a light dusting of snow, how the softness of her jacket had rubbed against mine, and her voice had been buoyant, how she was completely different from my Erin, who treated me as though I was an intruder in her joy.

“Can you speed up this story a bit? Like, to the part where you don’t create an irreparable tear in time and space?”

“I’m just saying she was real in this universe. Like a perfect but better version of my Erin. She took the joint we were smoking from my hand as naturally as if we’d been together for years. Seriously, we should be celebrating.”

“I’ll celebrate once I know you haven’t fucked up the multiverse,” Donnie said. All the same, he took a long sip of his rum and sat down at his desk across from me.

“It was incredible,” I told Donnie. “We were standing by the Huron River, the snow falling, her body buzzing against mine, sunlight making everything sparkly with winter, and she told me I was amazing. We kissed like it was the first time, the falling snow shimmering and beautiful around us.”

“Wow, that’s really fucking great, man. You risked imploding the universe for a make-out session with your girlfriend. Please tell me you didn’t inform her she was from another reality.”

“Well, I showed her the mouse video and told her she was the mouse and she freaked. ‘You quantum kidnapped me?’ she said. I tried to explain that the other her had cheated on me and we hadn’t had sex for a year, but—”

“Are you joking?” Donnie said, and got up again. “That means there’s a person in another dimension who knows they’ve transcended realities.”

“I figured it was the only right thing to do, especially since we were making out. But once she heard about the other her she demanded to see herself.”

“Fuck,” Donnie said.