“I can’t explain,” Galen shakes his head. “Not right now. Please, just go home and start reading. I’ll call you later,” he opens the front door, making it even harder for Neve to argue.
She’s beginning to feel scared. It’s like he’s asking her to do something illegal.
“I appreciate the gesture, professor,” Neve starts to pull the book back out of her purse. “I just don’t think I’d have the time to—”
“Please,” Galen pushes down on her hand, his eyes glossed over with paranoia. “You need to trust me.”
Leave. Leave now.
“Yes. Okay,” she nods and lets Galen lead her out into the main hallway.
She reaches out to press the elevator button, but Galen’s hand flies up and blocks it.
“No—” he looks up at the floor the elevator is stalled at. “You should take the stairs.”
She’d say goodbye, but he seems too preoccupied to even notice. So she pulls her purse up to her chest and backs out into the stairwell.
Her paranoia grows with every step she takes, and then she is just shuffling down as fast as she can, having no idea what it is she’s running from.
Five floors down, she bursts out of the building’s side-exit into a dim and narrow alley.
The stress of her obscure circumstances is fueling her anxiety. So she leans onto the cold brick wall and tries to steady her breathing.
For some reason, her mind wanders back to when Galen’s interest in her was first sparked.
It wasn’t when she mentioned her dreams. It was when the loveseat in his office collapsed under her. And again today, his revelations about the theories followed revisiting the same incident.
She pulls her purse up against her chest and rests her chin onto it.
Why would Galen entrust her with his life’s work? What on earth did he mean when he said inviting her over was ‘self-serving’?
Has he been stalled in his research? Does he think of Neve as a potential case-study to help him with a breakthrough?
That sure would account for his personal touch of inviting her over for coffee and conversation. But it doesn’t explain him parting with his work so hastily.
What was so damn important that he had to get her out of there like that?
A flash of darkness in the corner of Neve’s vision startles her.
She pushes off the wall and looks down the length of the alley. Whatever she saw came and went too quickly, but from where? The door she just emerged from is the only side door to the building.
The thought of someone hiding behind the hedges propels her onto the main street; where there’s light, noise, and people.
With warm light draping over her skin and fresh air filing her lungs, she doesn’t feel quite as scared anymore. But at this point she just wants to go home.
Today is fast shaping up to be as distressing as yesterday. There’s only so much she should have to put up with.
With a cleansing breath, she sets out towards her apartment. But a few steps in, she notices someone staring at her from down the block.
He’s dressed in all black, and appears to be in his late thirties.
Is he the flash of black she saw a few seconds ago?
Probably not. He is way too far down the street.
And yet, there is something about the way he is eyeing Neve that makes her skin crawl.
She finds herself taking smaller and smaller steps with her attention firmly on him. But the moment his gaze drops down to her purse, Neve stops dead in her tracks and tightens her grip around it.
Without a second thought, she turns and starts in the opposite direction towards Dylan’s apartment.
This makes way more sense, anyway. His place is only a few blocks up the street. She can kill some time there until her irrational sense of doom passes.
Maybe they can even discuss the theories. Might be fun to swap notes about each other’s dreams and experiences. Galen might have sworn her to secrecy, but surely his own godson is exempt from the rule.
She puts a bit more distance between herself and the man in black, and then looks over her shoulder in his direction.
And he is nowhere to be seen. He must’ve turned the corner and gone about his business.
A wave of relief washes over Neve. But with her focus misplaced, she ends up bumping into someone.
“Oh—pardon me,” she backs up.
At the sight of her obstruction, she immediately feels sick to her stomach.
“Miss Knightly.”
“Professor Holt,” Neve acknowledges on impulse.
She can’t believe it. As if it weren’t bad enough to have run into the prick off university grounds, she has now made actual physical contact with him.
Guess I’ll be scrubbing myself with bleach all night.
Holt flaunts what he surely thinks is a charming smile. “Fancy running into you here,” he slides his gloved hands into the pockets of his wool overcoat.
“Yes, small city,” she flashes a shamelessly phony smile. “Very, very small.”
“What brings you to this lovely neighborhood?” he asks, judging Neve’s attire with no attempt at hiding his disconent.
“Well actually, my boyfriend and I own a condo a couple of blocks over.”
Wow, Neve. That wasn’t even remotely true. Why not just go ahead and throw in a Lamborghini while you’re at it?
“Is that right?” Holt nods impressively. “Well good for you. I myself have invested in a few properties around the block.”
I hate you. We’re not friends. Die.
“Right, well—it was really great running into you, professor.”
Seeming a bit disappointed, “right,” he extends his hand for a shake. “Likewise.”
His gesture confuses her. Is this an honest peace-offering, or another one of his traps?
With the fate of her final exam still hanging in the balance, Neve errs on the side of caution and shakes his hand.
His nod signals the end of their unholy encounter, so Neve retrieves her hand and resumes her walk towards Dylan’s place.
And for a moment, she ponders the likelihood of one of her Proxies actually getting along with Holt. If every possibility is reality some dimension, then there must be another version of her who—
She shudders at the sheer thought and sneaks a glance in his direction. But instead of Holt, she spots the same stranger she saw earlier down the block.
He is now roughly the same distance from her as when she first spotted him. Which means—
RUN.
She crosses to the middle of the street and snags an approaching taxi in the nick of time.
Chapter 18
Resonance
Neve keeps glancing behind her through the taxi’s rear window as she directs the driver one block at a time. By the off-chance that her stalker is following her, the odds of Neve losing the tail is much higher if she throws a few twists and turns into the mix.
After ten or so minutes of aimless driving through downtown’s veins, Neve directs the driver to Dylan’s place. She overpays cash to save time, bolts out of the taxi, and darts across the street to Dylan’s.
She keeps pressing his buzzer, but to no avail. Her impulse would normally be to assume he isn’t home, but he hasn’t returned any of the texts she sent him during her drive, either.
Is he upset with her over what happened at her apartment? He did say there’s something he needs to do, but that was yesterday.
Panic-striken, she scans the vicinity.
In spite of her aimless drive, she saw the man in black only a few blocks away. What if he’s still in the area? What if all of this was for nothing?
The main door to the building squeaks behind her and one of Dylan’s neighbors steps out.
Neve flashes him an innocent smile and then slips into the lobby behind him. She pulls the door shut to make sure no one else can sneak in like she just did, does another quick scan of the street, and when she doesn’t see any signs of her
stalker, decides to skip the lift and takes the stairs all the way up to the top floor.
But what if Dylan’s not home?
What is she going to do then?
She could call the police. Even if her fears aren’t warranted, and even if they laugh at, or scorn her for wasting their time, it’s still within her rights.
Panting, Neve emerges from the stairwell into the hallway of the sixth floor. But before her fist can land onto Dylan’s front door, it swings open to reveal him with damp hair.
His skin is a bit flushed and glistening, and he is wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist.
“Hey—” he frowns off Neve’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I buzzed—” she says while staring at his insanely ripped body.
“Yeah, I was in the shower. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I think? This creepy guy was stalking me a few blocks down, so—"
“What guy?” Dylan’s tone drops, deep and urgent. “What did he look like?”
“Can I come in?”
“Oh—yeah, of course,” he paves the way for her, and then scans the hallway before closing the door.
Lingering in the foyer, Neve watches as he applies the heavy-duty bolt-locks to the front door. And with her fresh experience of being followed, the locks no longer seem like a frivolous precaution taken by a wealthy father. They seem… necessary.
But Yaletown is a posh neighborhood. One of the safest in the city. Are those locks meant to keep out someone in particular?
Could it be the same man Neve is trying to evade?
“Just give me a sec to throw something on,” Dylan makes his way towards his bedroom.
“Oh—sure. Take your time.” Neve watches him go, astounded by just how much his body has changed over the years. From the back he looks like a whole new person, even in spite of his signature red hair.
With relief settling back in, Neve makes her way into the living space and sits down on the couch.
From Dylan’s bedroom, the sliding and banging of drawers are followed by hasty swooshes of fabric. A ‘click’, a sharp ‘hssss’, and the wobbling of a metallic bottle follow, and Neve can’t help but crack a smile.
He still uses mousse in his hair.
Slowly, the events of the day creep back into her mind. She pulls Galen’s book out of her purse just as Dylan walks back out into the living space.
He’s wearing a pair of dark jeans and a navy-blue T-shirt that’s way too small for him. The collar is so stretched, Neve couldn’t tell it was a v-neck at first.
“Sorry about that,” Dylan pulls the rim of his shirt down, covering the exposed sliver of his milky skin.
“Wait, is that—” Neve’s eyes narrow as she points to Dylan’s shirt.
“Yeah—” he smiles and looks down, then starts to smooth out the shirt’s fold-lines near his abdomen. “You helped me pick it out on Boxing Day.”
Three and a half years ago, Neve reminisces. She can practically see the clouds they breathed into the chilly air, and feel the smolder of her raspberry tea seeping into her hand.
“What’s that?” Dylan walks over and takes a seat next to her.
She looks down at the book. “Galen lent it to me.”
“Nice,” Dylan’s brows rise, his smile waning a bit. “What’s it about?”
And just then, Neve realizes the book has no title. “Um—I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet.”
Gliding her hand over the soft leather cover, she’s overcome by a peculiar feeling. By comfort shrouded in mystery.
And all of a sudden it feels like there’s something she was supposed to remember.
Something important.
She slides her nail along the side of the book and opens it to a random page.
It’s type-written, Neve marvels. Just like the book from her nightmare last night.
That one didn’t have a title either.
“You okay?” Dylan rests his hand on her back.
Neve looks up at him. “Has Galen ever mentioned the Fray Theory to you?”
Dylan shakes his head with a small, unknowing pout. “Can’t say that he has, no.”
Neve’s brows knit.
“That’s really weird,” she starts to skim the text in the book. “So, he never brought it up when you guys talked about your nightmares?”
“Honestly, I think he secretly hated talking about my dreams. He’d keep trying to change the subject.”
Neve can definitely identify with that. Galen was dismissive with her too when they first met.
“Why do you think he would do that?” she asks.
“I have no idea. Maybe he thought I was trying to get attention,” he shrugs it off. “So after a while I just stopped bringing them up altogether.”
“I doubt that’s what he thought. You’re not exactly an attention-whore,” she laughs to lighten the mood, but Dylan just looks at her with a ghost of a smile.
“But I get it,” she looks down.
“Get what?”
“Why you stopped bringing it up. How exhausting it can be to keep screaming into the void.”
Neve tries to shake it off, but the straws are fast piling up: her childhood therapy, Elli’s death, Galen’s highly questionable behavior…
“What’s going on, Neve?” Dylan glides the back of his fingers along her draping hair, and pulls the onyx veil behind Neve’s ear.
“I don’t know why he hasn’t—I mean—maybe it’ll make things worse for you,” she says, remembering her promise to Galen. A promise she would break in a heartbeat if Dylan’s happiness was at stake.
And she wholeheartedly believes that it is.
“Our session yesterday was cut short, and he was booked solid for the next little while, so he invited me over to his place so we can—”
“His place?” Dylan smiles with genuine surprise.
“Yeah,” she says awkwardly, letting him know she too was taken aback by Galen’s offer.
Silence stretches out between them.
“Cool,” Dylan starts to pick at the fraying threads along the rips in his jeans. “Are you going to take him up on it?”
“I… sort of just came back from there,” she holds up the book.
σ
Neve follows along as Dylan reads the introductory chapter of The Fray Theory.
“It’s more or less what he and I talked about,” she says once Dylan’s reached the end. “So, what do you think?”
“I don’t know…” Dylan mumbles and relaxes back on the couch. “I mean, it’s fascinating.”
“Just don’t know if you believe any of it?”
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s not something you can falsify either.”
“I wonder how he came up with it.”
“He’s spent pretty much his whole life pondering the meaning of it all,” he says with a hint of sarcasm.
“If only they were true,” Neve says longingly.
“You want them to be true?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s nice to imagine another Elli out there who didn’t go through with it.”
With the mere mention of his name, she wells up. “Ugh, sorry,” she quickly collects her tears with her cardigan’s sleeve.
“Babe,” he swings his arm around and pulls Neve in, planting a firm, loving kiss on her temple. “I’m so sorry you lost him,” he whispers.
“We would’ve been friends,” she says. “He would have warmed up to you in no time.”
Her gaze falls back down onto the book and she notices the page number, bottom center.
Five… she frowns, then reaches out and flips to a page lined with a faint pencil grid. On top of the grid, there are twelve square diagrams in black ink.
Dylan turns his attention to the diagrams as well.
The first diagram is a black square with a squiggly line cutting diagonally across it.
At the bottom-left corner, where the line begins, there’s a black ink dot labeled ‘birth??
?. And at the top-right corner, where the line ends, there’s another dot labeled ‘death’.
“I think this is a two-dimensional representation of a person’s life,” she mutters under her breath, and looks to the other diagrams.
At first glance, they all seem identical to the first one. But there is a major difference between them: although each line starts at ‘birth’ in the bottom-left corner, it ends at a slightly different ‘death’ node.
“Same birth, different deaths,” Dylan mumbles.
Neve looks at the final diagram which appears to be a composite of the previous: all eleven lines are layered onto one another, starting at ‘birth’, and then diverging outwards.
It vaguely reminds her of the ‘fraying rope’ Galen mentioned during their session.
“The Fray Theory is about multiple dimensions,” she starts to think out loud. “This last diagram must be a representation of someone’s possible lives.”
“What are these intersections?” Dylan points out a few instances where the lines cross one another.
Neve lifts the book up for a closer look.
Next to each intersection, there’s a small marking: the letter ‘R’.
Resonance?
She lowers the book back down onto her lap and looks about the page for a reference to the ‘R’. She soon discovers a formula near the top-right corner of the page.
Nothing complicated. Just a symbol that looks like a sideways six, an equal sign, and a zero.
σ = 0?
“What’s this?” she points it out to Dylan.
“That’s Sigma,” Dylan indicates the sideways six, “the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. Haven’t you studied this?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Neve recalls frantically copying one of her colleague’s math homework right before class. “It’s been awhile.”
“It’s also a mathematical symbol that represents Standard Deviation,” Dylan says.
“It measures how far you deviate from average?” she squints, it all slowly coming back to her. “Okay, but what does it have to do with multiple realities?”
Dylan taps his finger on the formula. “Maybe it’s referring to how far you deviate from each one of your Proxies? The bigger the number, the larger the difference between the two of you?”