“How does this work?”

“Once I inject you, I guide you into the Many Worlds with hypnotic suggestion. You won’t be aware of it happening.”

“What are you giving me?”

“It’s a cocktail of hallucinogens. I’ve been experimenting with the mix since college to find a balance that makes the brain most susceptible to alternate realities. That’s the key, you see. We all grow up convinced that we know what reality is, and the only way to cross over is to break down that certainty. To open the mind to completely new possibilities.”

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I said.

Eve gave me a tight smile. “In a way.”

“What will it be like?”

“The first time can be overwhelming,” she warned me. “Whatever it is you see with your eyes, what you’re really doing is going to the inner depths of your brain. Like you’re at a kind of Grand Central Station, where the various versions of yourself cross paths. I don’t know what you’ll see, but the sensory overload may well be too much for you. If it is, you know the safe word to get out.”

“Infinite.”

“That’s right. If you say the word, it should break you out of wherever you are and end the session.”

“And take me right back here?” I asked.

“It will take you somewhere. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’ve always assumed that the Dylan I sent out into the void was the same Dylan who came back to me. But now I don’t know if that’s true. For all I know, some other Dylan will end up here on the bench with me in a few seconds. I won’t be aware of it. And nothing else will seem to have changed.”

“I hate to think that I’d be handing my bad choices to someone else,” I said with a smile.

Eve’s face turned severe. “Don’t joke. You act like this situation can’t get worse for you, Dylan. It can. It can get much worse. And remember, wherever you go, another Dylan is already there. It’s his life, not yours.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning you should remember what I said before. You might find yourself tempted to stay. You might want to kill that other version of yourself and take over his world.”

“I’m not a killer,” I insisted again.

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t answer her. I stared at the sun, getting higher over the water. The city was coming to life. Soon people would be coming down the pier. Impatiently, I rolled up my sleeve. “Let’s get on with it.”

Eve readied the needle. She drew in the liquid from the vial and tapped the hypodermic with one of her fingernails. She slid closer to me on the bench and took hold of my wrist, pushing on the seam of my arm to find the vein. When she found it, she put the metal point against my skin.

“Last chance,” she said.

“Do it.”

I felt the puncture like the prick of a bee sting. She pushed the plunger down.

For a brief moment, the world stayed the same. Nothing happened. I was Dylan Moran, I was on Navy Pier, I was sitting on a bench with Dr. Eve Brier. A part of me was gripped by hesitation, wanting to hold on to this world, but it was too late to stop. My bloodstream carried the drug throughout my body, and it washed over me like a wave rolling across sand. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I wasn’t on the pier anymore. Wherever I was traveling, I was far away.

I heard a chorus, like a billion whispers, each one soft, but together so loud that I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. I saw nothing at first. Whiteness. Blackness. Then something took shape in front of me. Something physical. Something familiar. I saw a diner on a clean city street. It was late, and I could see bright lights through the window. A man sat alone at the counter, a lonely urban stranger. Suit. Fedora. His back was to me. Near him, but not with him, were two others, a man and a woman. He was in a suit like the first man. She had red hair and a red dress.

This wasn’t real.

This was a painting that I’d seen thousands of times before.

I was in the Art Institute, staring at Nighthawks.

CHAPTER 13

“Sometimes I’ll look at this painting for hours,” a voice next to me said. “I don’t know what it is, but it just sucks me inside. Funny story, actually. This painting wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my grandfather. When he was a kid, he accidentally bumped into the museum director and saved him from getting killed in a car accident. The director bought Nighthawks from Edward Hopper the next year.”

I glanced at the man who was talking. He had a casual smile, which was not like my smile at all. He wore a gray collarless T-shirt with a few buttons at the neck. His stonewashed jeans were frayed. He had a full beard in serious need of a trim, and his brown hair was wildly messy, sticking up in a dozen places. I wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like that, but regardless, it was me.

Me but not me. A double. A twin.

“I think I’ve heard that story before,” I told him.

He looked at me, but his face showed no reaction, as if he saw nothing strange about encountering an exact likeness of himself. Or maybe he didn’t even notice. “Oh, yeah? You’ve met Edgar? Well, he comes here a lot. He’ll tell the story to anybody he meets.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you come here a lot, too?”

“Me? Not so much anymore. I moved away from Chicago a couple of years ago. Too many people, too much winter. I tried to get Edgar to go with me, but he’s a stubborn old mule, wouldn’t leave the city. I’m on the sand near Cocoa now. Pick up odd jobs here and there, but it’s all about the waves.”

“Surfing?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Well, that’s one way to live,” I said, absolutely horrified.

“Yeah. Best thing I ever did.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Dylan Moran. Ex-Chicagoan turned beach bum.”

“My name’s Dylan, too,” I replied.

“Small world.”

“Very small.”

I looked around at the rest of the museum. Every detail matched my memory, every painting looking as vivid as the original, every window in the skylight and every angled floorboard under my feet looking unchanged. It seemed impossible to me that my mind could replicate the entire museum in an instant, but here I was. Except where were all the other versions of myself?

Surfer Dylan and I were alone.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to him.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was wondering if you’d seen him. Choppy dark hair, heavy five-o’clock shadow, mean smile. He likes to wear a beat-up old leather biker jacket with stains on it.”

The other Dylan’s smile disappeared. “Man, you don’t want to find him. He’s bad news.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“Word gets around. That dude’s trouble. Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned around, I saw another Dylan Moran walk into the gallery. This one had a completely shaved head, wore a black turtleneck, and had silver circular glasses on his face. Everything about him was neat and orderly. He wandered past us without a word to a nearby painting, Peter Blume’s surrealistic The Rock. The centerpiece of the painting was a jagged sphere, like a pink geode cut open, around which men were laboring with hammers and stone slabs. A lone woman on her knees grasped for the sphere, as if worshipping it. Bald Dylan stood with perfect posture as he examined the painting, his hands folded together in front of him. Every now and then, he leaned forward to study a particular detail.

“This is a working man’s painting,” I said, joining him.

He studied me with a serious expression, but like Surfer Dylan, he showed no recognition that we were twins. “Yes, my father used to say this painting was about the ennoblement of the union man.”

“I can’t remember my father ever going to the museum.”

“No? My father worked here until he retired. He was an art historian. Actually, the museum runs in the family in a way. His father was the reason we got Nighthawks here.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The car accident?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the story. Yes, that’s right.”

“Is your father still alive?” I asked.

“He is. We lost my mother last year, though. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, her dying brought my father and me closer together. I don’t think either one of us would have made it through that time without the other.”

I tried to imagine a world in which my father hadn’t killed my mother. A world in which they’d both been with me as I grew up, in which my father didn’t drink and took me places and made me a part of his life. I knew nothing else about this Dylan next to me, but I already knew that I envied him.

I began to understand what Eve Brier had warned me about.