One Verse Multi, page 13
Seven boxes of cereal were on the counter. Tidus was eating some out of a bowl he held under his chin as he overstuffed his mouth. He glared at the box. Then he jabbed it with his spoon. The box rocked, slid, and ended up on the floor. Tidus jumped up and raced after something behind the counter. Then Bowser trotted around to the visible side of the island with the box in his mouth, cereal spilling all over the floor. He dodged Tidus and trotted back around out of sight.
“Why is he doing that?” I wondered out loud.
“You think it matters?” Hugo asked.
I did. I couldn’t say how or why. I flew the drone around to the front of the column of boxes. The front box was in a language I couldn’t read. I drove down the side of the boxes, then I turned it around to try to find Tidus. He had managed to get the box back from the dog and was watching as the Great Dane lapped up the mini-donut shapes off the floor.
I clicked back to Hugo’s notes:
HDM FOX TIDUS: Purchases eggs, frozen veggies, three boxes of H.O.
HDM FOX TIDUS: Four more H.O. purchased. Two from Latino market. Two from kosher market.
HDM FOX TIDUS: Consumed one box of H.O. in one sitting.
“Jeez, H, did you have to abbreviate Honoy-Os to H.O.?” I laughed. “Tidus buys a lot of Hos.”
“I got hoes in different universe frequencies,” Wei sang.
“Merde! I didn’t even notice—damn it, it’s like that in the report,” he groaned. I could feel him move off.
The boxes on the counter were the ones purchased from the ethnic grocery stores. I couldn’t read much off the boxes. I flew around as Tidus moved back toward his room. Bowser followed him, momentarily abandoning the cereal on the floor. I turned toward the open shelves that served as a pantry.
“Maybe it’s a taste test,” Tamar said.
“Doesn’t everyone know what Honoy-Os taste like?” I wondered.
“He might be—”
“I don’t think it’s him.” Tamar looked annoyed that I had barked at her. “I’m sorry, I just mean…I don’t think it’s him.”
I found three English boxes of cereal on the shelf.
“Honey-ohs?” I read. Those words, gold lettering on a red box, were so familiar children could identify them. And yet it didn’t look right. I squinted and tried to read it again. “Honey-oh-oh shit. It’s the brand. It’s the brand!”
“What?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think it was called that before. I mean it was always Honey-ohs in sound, but I don’t think it was spelled that way,” I said. I was trying to talk and think at the same time. I clicked back to my notes. I had tried to write down foods we had watched people eat. Some foods were decent at crossing rifts, some weren’t. I wondered where and when I had noted the cereal.
“Really?” Tamar asked, leaning in. “That would be amazing. A real Mandela effect. I mean they’re real, but in real time?”
“Another one?” Kiki said.
“What does that mean?” Tamar asked.
Kiki and Mason explained the alleged Mandela effect I thought I had experienced while at home.
“Why didn’t you tell the rest of us?” Hugo asked. “That would’ve been great for the report!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t have evidence. But I have some for this, I just have to find it.”
“What can I do to help?” Hugo asked.
“I need some cereal. Go down to the Hub get a box from every universe you can. Make sure they tell you which verse it’s from.”
“I’m on it,” Tamar said.
“I’ll help,” Mason said. They left in a blaze of plaid.
“This is crazy,” Kiki said.
“Kix, is there a way to search my notes for a keyword?”
“I think so,” they said. I switched places with them at the table. They keyed in a backdoor code for the program, then they did some digital magic.
“This could be huge,” Hugo cried, hole punch still in hand. “Could you imagine what we could know from observing a King Henry effect in real time? Could you imagine if we could pinpoint the exact moment it changed?”
“We don’t know that it changed. I just really, really think it did. I can’t remember for sure. The last time I saw a box was with Luca.”
“What box?” Luca said, stepping into the room. We all turned to him and I heard the others breathe, readying to explain.
“Nobody tell him,” I practically screamed.
Kiki, Wei, and Hugo looked at me like I was nuts. Luca looked amused.
“What is it?” he asked.
I found a pen and paper. “What’s your home-verse?”
I poised the pen to write. I heard Luca clear his throat. He put his hands in his back pockets in that nervous way he did. He didn’t look like he wanted to say.
“I…um…2940F…OX.”
I stared at him. It was a moment of weightlessness. My brain couldn’t process the idea that Luca and FOX Tidus shared a home universe.
“Wow, what’re the odds?” Hugo said, expressing half of what my brain was thinking.
“Martin has a type,” Kiki said, supplying the rest.
I glared at them. “Focus.”
I looked back at Luca. I abandoned my pen. He just shrugged, a little apologetic.
“I…well, how you answer this next question has the potential to change everything.”
“No pressure,” Luca said.
I took a breath. “You know that donut-shaped oat cereal.”
“Of course.”
“How do you spell it?”
“What?”
I wanted to laugh with excitement and suspense. “Please, just spell it, the brand.”
“H-o-n-o-y-o.”
“I can’t believe it,” Hugo said, collapsing into a chair.
“Are you sure?” I asked. My heart slammed against my ribs. I had to be sure. I needed him to be sure. “How do you know?”
“Martin, I live there. There were jingles. ‘We put the O in honoy, honey. We put the O in honoy, honey. Can’t ever have too many Os, so we spell it h-o-n-o-y honey,’” Luca sang. His conviction was clear. “What’s this about?”
“Look,” I said, pointing him toward Kiki.
He looked at the video, still showing the boxes of cereal in the 2940FOX universe that were labeled Honey-Ohs.
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s in your home-verse,” I said. “That’s FOX Tidus’s house.”
I watched his face, waiting for understanding to slot into place. The bruising on his cheek was hardly there, and he looked less tired than he had the day before. His dark eyes scanned the image and then looked at me.
“I—” Then his eyes snapped back to the cereal. The moment of understanding was so clear on his face, it was almost audible. His mouth dropped open and a hand came up to cover it.
“What in the hell?” he breathed.
Part Two
Trying to rewrite the conclusion
Section 14
Who hates dogs?
“I have to go there,” I breathed, staring at the photos.
Kiki had printed every image of the cereal we could scrounge from different universes. Hugo was ready to dig into all the footage MVP had, but Luca put a hold on that since we still had the meeting with Don. Mason and Tamar also came back with seven empty boxes, each with varying names. Hugo and I searched our notes and were able to collect some seriously telling information about the Mandela effect.
We were sure four universes experienced the name change and a handful of others maybe had. Of all the questions in my brain, one kept repeating: what did FOX Tidus know about it? We checked on the Tiduses in universes where we could verify the change. FOX Tidus was the only one who noticed. What about FOX Tidus made him see it?
“Go where?” Hugo asked. He was ferociously writing on his lineless paper. I watched as one page of notes turned into three before I remembered what I had been talking about. He was inexhaustible.
“FOX universe. We should talk to that Tidus. Why is he the only one who noticed? Maybe it started in his verse. His memory was transmitted to FAX Tidus, and all the changes seem to be in universes that are close to his in quantum frequency.”
“Should you really go back?” Tamar asked.
Even though there was nothing in her tone, the question stung a little. I blinked at her. “What else could we do? Send someone else? I guess he knows Wei, or maybe a stranger would be better?”
“Send Luca,” Kiki suggested. “It’s his verse.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
The room looked at me, and I could feel the question. Was I trying to keep Luca and FOX Tidus from meeting? It wasn’t that. I had no ground to stand on to defend my feelings toward FOX Tidus, especially not when we were on the brink of something. I couldn’t stop Luca, nor would I. It was his home, after all.
“We don’t know what’ll happen if he goes back. Will he forget the change? Are we willing to risk it?”
“I never thought about that,” Wei said. “Can you be impacted by your universe after something changes when you aren’t in it?”
“We’d risk his memory of it.”
“Good thinking, Martin,” Hugo said. He put a hand on Luca’s shoulder.
“Interesting,” Luca said.
“I don’t care who you send. We need to ask Tidus about this.”
“Don’t forget Don will be here in three hours,” Luca said.
Hugo started swearing in French. He marched around the room flapping his hat against his thigh and running his hand through his long hair. I looked at the chart we had made documenting the changes. I could feel my connection to it all. I thought about Dugan and the drawings he had given us. I had the haunting feeling we were making a mistake.
“I’ll go,” Kiki said, “with Martin.”
I looked at them. We all looked at them.
“Don doesn’t like me anyway. I think Martin is the only one who can get close to FOX Tidus fast enough,” they said. “Hugo said we shouldn’t go to a verse alone, so I’m volunteering.”
There was a full minute of silence.
“All those in favor of Martin’s plan?” Hugo asked after chewing one of his thumbnails.
Hands rose into the air slowly, carefully. It wasn’t unanimous, but I was going back to the FOX-verse.
“Okay, how will you do this?” Hugo asked.
“It’s going to take five hours to get to Florida,” Kiki said. They opened their sequencer and pressed a few buttons. HQ was on its way back south from its routine northern trek, but we were still far from the Florida area.
“That will make it eight-ish when we land, eight thirty by the time we get to FOX Tidus’s part of the city.”
“How will you find him? You’ll scare him if you just walk up to his house,” Mason said. “He doesn’t work today.”
The answer was simple. “Bowser.”
“The dog?” Kiki said. “I hate dogs.”
“Who hates dogs?” I asked.
“Someone who’s been bit,” Kiki snapped.
I sighed. “You won’t have to engage with the dog. You don’t have to do anything. The important thing is Tidus walks Bowser around nine. There’s a popular park along their usual path. I can wait for him at the park.”
“What’ll you say?” Hugo asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Stick with the government thing. Say you’re investigating something,” Tamar said.
I was tired of lying to him. But what other way could there be? I couldn’t explain everything. Not in one night, one moment, and have him believe it enough, trust me enough, to answer my questions.
“That’s probably what I’ll go with,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.
“Okay. Right, Tamar can be on the com, and the rest of us can finish getting ready for Don. This is really exciting. We’re finally getting somewhere,” Hugo said.
“Can’t wait,” Tamar grumbled.
Kiki and I split up to gather our equipment. We were on a boat heading south within twenty minutes. I closed my eyes and tried to think about what I could say. I thought about the lie that I was a government employee. I thought about the truth.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Kiki said.
They sat across from me in the small, interior cabin of the boat. Their arms were crossed, and their face was shadowed. Their knee bounced.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m just not sure what I hate more. Being there to face Don or leaving the others behind to do it. He sucks. All the MVP founders do.”
I nodded. My brain cycled through the photos I had found for Tamar. I wanted to ask Kiki to say more but I knew I couldn’t. “What would you say?”
“To Tidus? He’s weird, so I’d probably go with the truth.”
“Ya think?”
“Yeah. He’s a dingus.”
I laughed.
“It would probably work,” Tamar said in my ear. “Hugo is worried we’ll change a subject by observing it. I told him that it’s quantum physics…so duh. Do what you need to. Plus, he seems super into talking to you about conspiracy shit. The worst thing that would happen is you punch a few more holes in the multi-verse.”
“I’m not very good at punching, I’m all chub and no bite,” I said.
“Fucking focus.”
I arrived in the park just past eight forty-five. I found a bench and pulled a book out of my backpack. Tamar was tracking Tidus and said he would pass me in ten minutes. Kiki wandered off to a coffee shop across from the park. They said they didn’t want to watch me be weird with my in-universe boyfriend without a latte. From the bench, I watched women in sundresses take photos of each other against the hibiscus. I thought it was too dark to get good photos. Even though it was warm, it was winter, and the sun was long gone by now.
“Do you remember the Mandela effect?”
“I do,” I answered, flapping the book’s pages. “I didn’t think it would impact me since this isn’t my home-verse.”
“Couldn’t hurt to check. It’s kinda scary, right?” Her voice dropped into a whisper.
I nodded. My heart was pounding. I thought of the last thing Tidus said. He was interested in me, and I had walked away from that offer. But there I was trying to get in his good graces again. I watched a collie catch a Frisbee and run a victory lap around a drinking fountain. The more I watched, the more I decided my cover story was trash. I didn’t really have a reason for being in the park. If I was on a government job, I would probably just read in my hotel room.
“Ten o’clock.”
“It’s only nine,” I said without thinking.
“Martin—look.”
I looked around. I didn’t see him.
“Other ten.”
I swiveled and saw Bowser before I saw Tidus. The dog bobbed along, coming around a corner, his nose sweeping the path, but he never followed it into the grass.
“That’s like four o’clock.”
“No, Martin, it’s ‘I don’t give a shit’ o’clock.”
I shook my head and thumbed to a random page and pretended to read. I looked hard at the book, not seeing any of the words. I had read it over and over, so it’s not like I didn’t know what it said. It was from my home-verse. I used to think the book was universe-unique but now I know it’s just a book, bundled paper. The book and my backpack ended up on the ground as Bowser climbed into my lap.
“Shit, I’m sorry I—” Tidus stopped mid-sentence when he realized it was me. He was holding his phone. He had been looking at it instead of where Bowser was going.
I petted the dog and tried to look remorseful. “It’s fine. I…hey.”
“Hi,” he said in a voice with exceedingly little tone to it.
“I…uh, came here to read. I didn’t come here to run into you again. I mean, I knew you came here, because I saw you the last time. I watched you leave…well, not watched, but I recognized Bowser and…um…well, here you are,” I babbled. I also stood up. Bowser tried to put his huge paws on my shoulders, but Tidus carefully pulled him down.
“Well, it’s a nice park. Bowser, let’s go,” he said with a polite smile. The dog heeled and they started to walk away from me.
“Wait,” I said, grabbing my stuff off the sidewalk.
“Yeah?”
I caught up, and I looked at the book rather than at him. “I…am sorry. I’m…it’s not…look—”
“I get it, Martin. You aren’t interested, it’s no big deal.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested,” I said before I thought better of it.
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me through dark purple curls.
“You changed your hair.”
He fought a smile and said, “You’re not off the hook.”
I laughed. “Okay. Fair, but I’d like the chance to explain. It’s not going to be easy to understand most of it. It’s complicated. I’m…if…well—”
“Ask him to dinner,” the voice in my head offered. It wasn’t Tamar. It was Luca, his gentle, even tenor a surprise. “Don’s here, so it’s just me now, I already got myself kicked out of the meeting. A restaurant will give you cover to talk without being overheard and it’s neutral. Besides you’re better over food.”
I laughed and shook my head. I looked up at Tidus, who was looking at me like he was on the verge of walking away.
“You ever have Honey-Oh cereal?”
There was a flash of confusion on Tidus’s face. His eyes narrowed. “Of course. Why?”
“I have been living off it for three days. If you let me, I’ll buy dinner and explain myself. Let me prove I don’t suck.”
