Many Worlds of Albie Bright (9 page)

Scrambling to my feet, the sound of the orchestra is still blaring out, but the stuffed musicians are scattered across the stage. My crash-landing has taken out the brass and woodwind sections and most of the penguin violinists too. On the other side of the room, the kangaroos’ cricket match has been completely demolished and one of the crocodile batsmen is now stuck halfway up the ladder. Wesley is nowhere to be seen.

“Albie Bright!” Miss Benjamin shrieks. With a sinking feeling, I turn to see my prematurely aged teacher standing in the doorway, her left eye now twitching into hyperdrive. Next to her, the museum curator is shaking his head in horror as he surveys the devastation. “What on earth have you done?”

On the TV, Doc Brown is hanging from the clock tower as Marty McFly accelerates the DeLorean to 88 miles per hour, ready to take the time machine back to the future. It’s weird, I must have seen this film at least fifty times, but even though the story is exactly the same, the Marty McFly in this movie looks completely different. I guess some other actor must have played the part in this parallel universe. But I’m not really watching the film – I’m just sitting on the living-room sofa, waiting for Grandad Joe to start talking to me.

He’s not said a word since he turned
up at the museum to take me home, listening in silence as Miss Benjamin angrily listed my “crimes”:

Even when Miss Benjamin told Grandad Joe that I was suspended from school for a week pending further inquiries, he hadn’t said a word. Instead we’d walked back home together in silence before he sat down in his armchair with a heavy sigh, turning on the TV that was still showing the same film I’d last seen in another universe.

I shouldn’t care about any of this. I can just climb back inside my cardboard box and leave this mess for Bad Albie to sort out. After all, none of this would have happened if he hadn’t forced me to go to school instead of him. But then I see the look of disappointment on Grandad Joe’s face and I can’t help feeling that
I’ve
let him down.

“Grandad?” I say, desperately wishing that he’d talk to me.

But he just sits in his armchair, staring at the TV as the lightning hits the clock tower.

“Grandad?” I say again, a bit louder this time in case he’s going deaf.

Grandad Joe sighs in reply. “I can’t even look at you, Albie,” he says, as the DeLorean disappears in a flash of electricity. “Not after what you’ve done this time.”

“But I didn’t mean to—”

“I used to take your mum to that museum when she was a little girl,” he tells me. “Of course, it wasn’t called Fusion then – it was the Clackthorpe Museum of Natural History and Mechanical Wonders. Charlotte used to love looking at all the animals. She’d keep on asking me questions. How high can a kangaroo hop? What’s the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? Why is it that every animal is different? Your mum told me once that it was looking at the animals in the museum that made her want to be a scientist when she grew up. And I’ve just had to listen to your teacher telling me that you’ve destroyed half of these creatures with your stupid prank.”

Shaking his head, Grandad Joe rubs his eyes, trying to hide the sadness that’s started to leak out.

“What do you think your mum would say?”

This makes me feel like I’ve just been punched
in the stomach. Of all the things Grandad Joe could say to me, this is the absolute worst. Everything that I’ve done has been for my mum – inventing the Quantum Banana Theory, risking my life to kidnap a psychopathic cat, travelling to a parallel universe – but how can I explain any of this to Grandad Joe? There’s only one thing I can say.

“I’m sorry, Grandad.”

“Are you?” he asks doubtfully, looking at me for the first time. “That’s what you always say. Look, Albie, I know your dad’s not around much at the moment – rushing back and forth with his cold fusion thingamajigs – but that’s no excuse for the way you’re behaving. I know you think I’m a silly old man who can’t even cook dinner without burning it, but your dad is trying to make the world a better place for you to grow up in.” I can see the tears in Grandad’s eyes as he stares into mine. “When I look at you, Albie, I can see my Charlotte too. You’re the spitting image of your mum. She wanted to make the world a better place too, and now it’s up to you to make her proud.”

I nod my head, fighting back my own tears.
Make her proud
… That’s all I ever wanted to do.

“Don’t worry, Grandad,” I tell him, trying to
keep my emotions in check as I get up off the sofa. “I’m going to put things right.”

As I climb the stairs up to the attic, a guilty feeling follows me. Everything Grandad Joe said is whirring around my head, but I can’t face up to it now. All I want to do is get out of this place. Part of me feels like I’m running away, but if I’m going to put things right then I need to find my mum. My bedroom door is open and as I step inside it looks like the coast is clear.

The cardboard box is waiting for me in the corner of the room – my ticket out of this parallel universe. I only hope that it’s not a one-way ticket. What if the Quantum Banana Theory doesn’t work again? I try and push this nagging worry to the back of my mind.

Kneeling down, I check that everything is in the right place. The Geiger counter is still hooked up to my mum’s laptop, the banana in front of it now covered in brown splotches. It looks like I’m ready to go.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

At the sound of my own voice, I spin round to see Bad Albie standing in the doorway, a cartoon scowl scrawled across his face.

“I sent you to school to keep everyone off my back, but you’ve just made things a thousand times worse. You’ve wrecked the museum, got me suspended from school and when Dad finds out he’s going to ground me for ever. What’s the big idea? I thought you clones were supposed to do what you’re told.”

He glares at me as if daring me to disagree.

“I told you before,” I snap back at him. “I’m not a clone. I’m you – from a parallel universe.”

Bad Albie just looks at me like I’m a moron.

“A parallel what?”

But I don’t get the chance to answer his question as a ginger streak of fur rockets into the room.

“What the—”

With a miaow that sounds like a panther with a hangover, Dylan darts past Bad Albie and dives inside the cardboard box, its flaps falling shut behind him. For a second we both stand there in stunned silence, then I hear the clicking sound of the Geiger counter inside.

No! Not without me!

“Was that a cat?” the other Albie asks, looking kind of worried as he walks towards the box. He grabs hold of the gardening gloves that I wore when
I first arrived here, picking them up off the floor. “We’ve got to get it out of that box before it thinks it’s kitty litter time and stinks out my room.”

He shoves the gloves into my hands.

“Get ready to grab it when I open the flaps.”

Leaning forward, Bad Albie slowly opens the box, waiting for the cat to spring out.

Nothing happens.

With a puzzled look on his face, he peers inside to find a banana, a Geiger counter and my mum’s laptop. There is no cat. Dylan has done it again.

Scratching his head, Bad Albie turns back to look at me in confusion.

“Where’s the cat gone?”

So I tell him about the Quantum Banana Theory.

When I finish explaining everything, Bad Albie is still scratching his head.

“So you’re telling me that my next-door neighbour’s cat is now in a parallel universe?”

“No, Dylan’s
my
next-door neighbour’s cat,” I correct him.

“And you’re from a parallel universe too?”

“Yes, that’s what I told you.”

A huge grin lights up my evil twin’s face.

“This is brilliant.”

This is when I find out that the one thing worse than an alternative-universe Albie who doesn’t believe me is one who does.

“So if I climb inside this box, I’ll travel to a parallel universe?” he asks, peering at Mum’s laptop as a stream of zeroes and ones pulse across the screen.

“Yes, but you see, the important thing is we can find Mum and—”

Bad Albie shakes his head.

“I don’t care about my mum. I never even knew her. No, if this magic box can take me to another world, I’m going to find the one where my stupid dad’s not given all his money away to charity.” He narrows his eyes as he stares back at me. “I should be a millionaire – and in a parallel universe I will be.”

For a second I’m lost for words. How can he say he doesn’t care about Mum? She’s the reason I invented the Quantum Banana Theory. The only thing that matters is finding her again.

“Come on,” Bad Albie growls. “What do I need to do to get this thing working?”

If I let Bad Albie climb inside that box he’ll wreck everything. I’ve got to think of a way to stop him.

I’ve still got hold of the gardening gloves, and as I glance down at them a crazy idea jumps into my mind. I just need to convince this other Albie that it’s true.

“If you want to travel to a parallel universe then you’ve got to wear the right gear,” I tell him, throwing the gloves straight back at him. “Just like I did.”

Catching hold of them, Bad Albie looks at me like I’ve just told him to wear a tutu.

“A pair of gardening gloves?”

He couldn’t sound more suspicious, but if this plan’s going to work I’ve got to convince him.

“Not just the gloves,” I say. “You need to wear the mask and the body armour too. You don’t want your insides turned into spaghetti when you go through the black hole into a parallel universe, do you? The body armour will keep all your bits in place and the mask will protect your face from the cosmic rays.”

Bad Albie looks down at the Scary Clown Halloween mask and my BMX body armour, which is still lying on the floor where I left it.

“Are you sure?” he asks me doubtfully.

“It got me here in one piece, didn’t it?” I tell him,
picking up the protective vest and pushing it into his hands. “But if you want to risk your insides being squeezed out of your eyes like toothpaste from a tube, you go right ahead.”

Still grumbling, Bad Albie starts to pull the chest armour on.

This is my only chance. While he’s trying to pull the BMX vest that is two sizes too small over his head, I’m crawling inside the cardboard box. Trying not to make a noise, I pull the cardboard flaps shut behind me, fumbling in the dark to find the Geiger counter.

I look down at the readout, but there’s no light coming from the display. It’s dead. On the laptop screen, the zeroes and ones are still scrolling so quickly that they blur into one. But something’s gone wrong. There’s no power reaching the Geiger counter. If the banana goes radioactive, then how am I going to know if the universe has split in two?

Scrabbling in the darkness, I feel for the cable that connects the digital radiation detector to the laptop and my fingers brush against the end of the USB connector. Somehow Dylan must’ve disconnected it.

“Hey, where have you gone?”

I hear my own voice from outside the box and I don’t sound very happy.

With a shaking hand, I jab the connector into the USB port of Mum’s laptop. With my other hand I grab hold of the banana, holding it next to the Geiger counter as I mutter under my breath in desperation.

“Come on, come on, come on.”

The side of the cardboard box bulges as Bad Albie aims a kick at it.

“You—”

Then I hear the Geiger counter click and the world seems to freeze for a millisecond. Somewhere outside the box I feel a billion invisible elastic bands twang and then the Geiger counter clicks again and my evil twin’s shout snaps into silence.

Crouching there in the darkness, I try and catch my breath. It looks like the Quantum Banana Theory has worked again. The only thing I want to know is where am I now?

This time I’ve learnt my lesson. Opening the flaps, I cautiously peek my head out of the box, keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t get punched in the face.

My bedroom looks exactly the same. There’s my telescope and piles of books and comics; even the poster of the solar system on the wall above my bed. I do a quick count of the planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune – and breathe a sigh of relief that there are only eight this time.

It’s only when I climb out of the box that I realise there’s someone sitting at
my desk. They’ve got their back to me, but I can tell at once that it’s me – I mean, another me.

“I can’t believe you’re here.”

This other Albie turns round and my jaw drops to the floor as I see a girl staring back at me. It’s like looking into a funfair mirror. Her face looks the same as mine – eyes, nose and mouth all the same shape and in the same place – but she’s definitely a girl.

I open and close my mouth a few times, but no words come out.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. Every cell in your body contains chromosomes that make you who you are. What colour eyes you have, how tall you are, whether you’re going to need to wear glasses or not. All this information is in your chromosomes. There’s even a special pair of chromosomes that decide whether you’re a boy or a girl. If you get an X and a Y chromosome you’re a boy, but if you get two Xs then you turn into a girl. It’s a 50/50 chance. The Albie in this universe must have got two Xs.

While I’m still doing an impression of a drowning goldfish, this Girl Albie is looking back at me with the same shocked expression on her face.

“You’re a boy,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief.

What am I supposed to say? In the last parallel universe, the other Albie thought that I was a clone, but there’s no way I can pretend that now.

“I’m—”

“I know exactly who you are,” Girl Albie replies, her words bubbling out in a torrent of excitement. “You’re me from a parallel universe. Inside that cardboard box is a banana, a Geiger counter and Mum’s quantum computer, which is hooked up to the Grid at CERN. Her experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have created a mini black hole that leads to a parallel universe. You’ve used the mini particle accelerator in Mum’s quantum computer to replicate this, creating a wormhole through the fifth dimension that lets you travel to these parallel worlds. It’s simple really. The Quantum Banana Theory works.” She pauses for a second to catch her breath, a grin spreading across her lips. “I should know, I thought of it too.”

My jaw drops open again. The Albie in this universe isn’t just a girl, she’s a genius as well. We both might have invented the Quantum Banana
Theory, but, to be honest, I haven’t got a clue how it works. But Girl Albie seems to have it all worked out.

“I’m Alba, by the way,” she tells me.

This time I manage to stutter out my own name in reply.

“I’m Albie.”

Alba laughs.

“That figures,” she says. “After Albert Einstein, right? Mum and Dad were never that creative when it came to names. Dad even called my pet hamster Hawking after the famous scientist.”

From the desk behind her I hear a familiar squeak and catch a glimpse of Hawking scurrying round his wheel.

“Me too!” I tell her excitedly.

For a second we just grin at each other. In this parallel universe I might have turned into a girl, but at least my hamster is still alive. But there’s one thing I can’t figure out.

“If you know all about the Quantum Banana Theory then why haven’t you tried it yourself?” I ask Alba. “You could have travelled to a parallel universe too.”

Alba pushes her chair back from the desk and I
notice for the first time that it has wheels instead of legs.

“Since I ended up in this, I haven’t felt like risking the trip,” she tells me, the grin on her face slowly fading away.

I can’t stop myself from staring at her wheelchair.

“What happened?”

“It was a car accident,” Alba replies. “Mum was driving us to the airport to meet Dad, who was coming back from a filming trip. It was a foggy morning and there was a crash on the motorway – a drunk man driving a white van on the wrong side of the road. He smashed straight into us. I don’t remember much after that. The car was a complete wreck and Dad told me that it took the firefighters three hours to cut us out.” A tear starts to creep out of the corner of her eye. “I was lucky – I was just paralysed from the waist down, but Mum didn’t make it.”

My brain is flashing up an error message, unable to make sense of what Alba’s just told me. This can’t be right. I’ve found my way to another parallel universe, but it’s another world without my mum.

“What about your universe?” Alba asks me,
rubbing her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. “You can still walk. Did Mum survive the accident there?”

Still dazed, I shake my head, almost feeling guilty that I can walk and Alba can’t.

“There was no car accident,” I tell her.

“So Mum’s still alive in your universe?” she asks eagerly. I recognise the spark of hope that suddenly lights up her eyes.

I shake my head again, not wanting to say the words out loud. This only makes them feel more real.

“No,” I finally force myself to reply. “She died of cancer two weeks ago.”

Alba’s face crumples again, the tears in her eyes a mirror image of my own. I feel like we’ve both been cheated. Why can’t there be a universe where Mum’s still alive? We stare at each other, sharing our sadness in silence. Then the sound of Grandad Joe’s voice comes up the stairs.

“Are you ready yet?”

Alba and me reply simultaneously, “I’m coming!”

The sound of our voices calling out together creates a weird echo and I clap my hand over my mouth when I realise what I’ve done. Then I hear
the sound of Grandad’s footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Have you got a boy up there, Alba?”

Alba looks at me, her eyes now wide with panic.

“Hide,” she hisses.

I look around the room. It’s just as messy as mine. There’s only one place I can hide. The same spot that got me here in the first place. As Grandad Joe opens the door I dive inside the cardboard box.

“I thought I heard a boy’s voice.”

Grandad Joe sounds puzzled, like he’s trying to work out how Alba replied to him in stereo. Luckily Alba’s already thought up an explanation.

“I was just singing along to the radio while I was getting ready, Grandad.”

I stay quiet inside the cardboard box. The banana is only centimetres away from my face, the light from the laptop screen making it glow green. Silently I pull out the USB cable, frightened that the click of the Geiger counter might give me away.

“He didn’t sound like much of a singer to me,” Grandad Joe sniffed. “You should listen to some proper music like Bob Dylan instead. Now, that was a singer.”

I wince, remembering when Grandad Joe drove
me to the hospital to see Mum with
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
playing on the car stereo. I’d never heard of Bob Dylan before, but I think he must have been named after Dylan the cat – at least, that’s what he sang like.

“Anyway, you need to get a move on, Alba, if you want me to take you to the party. It’s nearly eight o’clock.” Grandad Joe pauses for a second. “Have you been crying?” he asks.

“It’s just hay fever,” Alba replies quickly, and I hear her blow her nose. “I’ll be down in a second, Grandad. I’ve just got to finish getting ready.”

“OK, but you need to be quick. The party started at seven, didn’t it? And when you get back we can talk about you tidying up this room.”

I hear the bedroom door close again, followed by the sound of footsteps heading downstairs. Then Alba lifts up the flap of the box, twisting her head at a ninety-degree angle to peer inside.

“I’ve got to go,” she whispers, keeping her voice low in case Grandad Joe’s got his hearing aid switched on. “It’s Victoria Barnes’s birthday party at the village hall tonight. Grandad’s dropping me off but you need to come and meet me there. I’ve got so much to tell you. If the Quantum Banana
Theory really works, I think I know what you need to do to find Mum again.”

“Alba!” yells Grandad.

With a small hopeful smile, Alba drops the cardboard flap and then I hear her wheel her chair towards the door.

Inside the box, a blur of zeroes and ones are still flashing across the laptop screen, the data from the Large Hadron Collider somehow still streaming into the computer from across the universe. I hold the Geiger counter in my hand. If I plug it in, any moment now a radioactive particle in the banana is bound to decay and the Quantum Banana Theory will send me to another parallel universe. And maybe this one will have my mum in it.

Outside the bedroom door I hear a loud beep, followed by a whirring noise that sounds like a lift going down. At first I can’t work out what it is, and then I remember. If Alba’s in a wheelchair then she must have a stairlift to help her get up and down the stairs.

I shake my head. It’s just not fair. We’ve both lost Mum but at least I can still walk.

Leaving the Geiger counter unplugged, I crawl out of the box. Alba said she knew what I needed
to do to find Mum again. I’m not going to run away to another parallel universe without giving her the chance to tell me what it is.

Downstairs I hear the front door slam shut. Alba is on her way to Victoria Barnes’s birthday party and I’m going to meet her there.

I can hear the party even before I get to the village hall, the thud of a song playing at full blast rumbling down the street. I recognise the song straight away even though the words are all wrong.

Tiny changes, that’s what my dad’s book said I’d find in every parallel universe. Even in a song I’ve heard a thousand times before.

Outside the village hall there’s more balloons hung up than even Buzz Lightyear would need to make it into orbit and through the window I can see a tsunami of coloured lights spinning across the ceiling.

“Albie!” Alba calls out to me from the door, pulling her wheelchair round in a nifty three-point turn. “You made it.”

It’s kind of strange seeing her again. This time I’m noticing all the things that make her a girl. Her hair’s a bit longer than mine to start with, her
eyelashes are thicker and even though our eyes, nose and mouth all look pretty much the same, there’s still some tiny differences that make Alba look like a girl and me a boy. We look the same, but different. Not an identical twin, but a sister maybe, if I’d ever had one.

“We’ve got to go in right now,” Alba says, looking a little bit stressed. “Victoria’s doing her nut because some people haven’t turned up. She’s two couples down for her dance competition.”

I thought Alba just wanted to meet me here. I didn’t think I’d actually have to go to Victoria Barnes’s birthday party. Can’t we just go and sit in the bus shelter and Alba can tell me what I need to know?

Alba notices the sudden panic in my eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve asked Victoria’s mum if I can bring my cousin to the party and she’s says it’s OK.”

“Your cousin?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly say to her, ‘Can I bring another Alba from a parallel universe?’, could I?” she replies sarcastically. “‘Oh, and by the way, he’s a boy.’”

When she puts it like that, I kind of see her point.

As a new song booms out through the open door, I follow Alba inside the hall only to find my worst nightmare waiting for me there.