Multiversum (15 page)

His eyes were shining.

‘I've examined your computers and decided that you're a little too curious for your own good. Just what do you want from me, kid?'

Marco knew the sound of that voice very well: it was the automatic speech generator that he used on the PC. When he spun around to look at the laptop, he saw a window open in the middle of his screen. He drove his wheelchair over to it, and then tried to move the mouse. It didn't respond to his commands.

The female voice that Marco had selected for that software was polite but spoke in a monotone, in spite of the best efforts by the programmers to introduce inflections and cadences corresponding to parenthetical phrases or question marks.

‘It's pointless to try to use your mouse or keyboard. I control them now. I've also taken the liberty of turning on your webcam; I hope you don't mind. I can see you. And I can hear you.'

A pause, accompanied by a rustling sound in the background. A crackling noise, as if someone had set a record-player needle down on the edge of a vinyl disc.

‘What do you want from me?' the voice went on.

Marco sat there, speechless. Was this Becker? Perhaps the robotic female voice was translating into speech everything the professor was typing somewhere else, who knew where.

‘I …' he started to say fearfully, uncertain whether it even made any sense to look into the camera, ‘I'm only trying to get some information about the Multiverse.'

Silence.

‘Don't ask about things you can't understand, kid.'

‘Talking about things is the only way to understand them.'

‘As long as you're sure you're talking to the right people, though.'

Marco shook his head. He was beginning to sense the challenge of carrying on this surreal conversation. The man could see him, possibly on a full screen, from a desk on the other side of the world, while all he could get out of him was the output from that anonymous speech converter.

‘You wrote that book. Maybe you can help me … My friend Alex — I'm pretty sure he's in the Multiverse.'

‘What you're saying makes no sense! All of us are in the Multiverse.'

‘Yes, of course, sorry, I understand that; it's just that he … well, he's communicating with a girl from another dimension … they talk to each other. But they're not living in the same reality. Please, don't take me for a lunatic.'

There was a pause for several seconds, interrupted only by the hum of the monitors. Marco cocked one eyebrow to indicate he was waiting for an answer.

‘Memoria,' said the flat, unaccented voice.

‘What?'

‘Memoria, that's what we call it. They have to find Memoria.'

‘Excuse me, but I'm just not sure I underst —'

‘If your friends really can
travel
, they'll find it. That's the way.'

‘The way to what?'

‘Memoria is the only path to salvation. What happened before is about to happen again.'

‘I don't get a thing you're saying! Can you just tell me what all this means?!'

In the meantime, the connection had become blurred and fuzzy. A buzzing sound coming from the computer's speakers became louder and louder, drowning out the man's words.

‘Tell your friend to find Memoria. Unless you're making all this up, he and the girl can get there. Once he's crossed the dimensional threshold, he'll discover the power that has always belonged only to those who have completed this experience. They can save themselves, but death will take them all the same. I have nothing more to say.'

‘What are you even talking about? None of this makes sense!'

No answer.

The window closed, and the rustling in the background vanished. Marco took off his glasses and put them down in front of the laptop, and then picked up a ballpoint pen and wrote on a Post-it:
Memoria
. Finally, he planted both elbows on the desk and put his hands in his hair as Becker's final words echoed in his head.

They can save themselves, but death will take them all the same
.

19

By the time Alex got back to the hotel, his clothes were heavy and clung to him uncomfortably.

The man behind the reception desk glared at him, as he left puddles behind him while walking across the red carpet in the lobby.

He hurried into the elevator, coughing uncontrollably. The mirror gave him a glimpse of his purple face.

Damn it
.
Now I'm getting sick.

Alex opened the door to his room and went in. He dropped his backpack by the bed, stripped off his jeans and T-shirt, both completely drenched, and tossed them on the floor, keeping only his boxer shorts on. Then he pulled his phone out of the outside pocket of his backpack and tried to turn it on. It was useless: the phone wasn't working, and even when he plugged it into his charger it wouldn't turn on. It wasn't that the batteries were low. Clearly, the rain had gotten into the phone's circuitry. Alex stuck his hand into the pocket on the front of his backpack: it was drenched.

‘Shit!' His eyes roamed over to the telephone on the bedside table. ‘This isn't going to be cheap. Oh well …' he muttered under his breath as he lifted the receiver and pressed zero for an outside line. He heard a dial tone. Now all he had to do was remember Marco's number.

Marco once taught me a trick to remember his number
—
let's see if I can get it … The prefix was three, four, eight … just like mine. Then, let's see … ah, right! The year that Italy won the World Cup championship in Spain, but backwards: two, eight, nine, one. And then?

Alex looked around the room. The fancy, expensive decor of the hotel room was hardly to his taste. A painting of a Madonna with a Christ Child in her arms dominated the centre of the wall, above the flat-screen television. The curtains were white, embroidered. The quilt on the bed, beige in colour, was adorned with stylised hunting scenes, similar to cave paintings he'd seen in various boring documentaries they'd had to watch in the school auditorium.

That's it! The American number for calling the police: nine, one, one! Let's see if that works …

He dialled the number and waited for the call to go through, his gaze riveted by the room-service menu and the astronomical prices next to each dish.

‘Hello?' Marco answered the phone apprehensively.

‘It's me! Alex! It's a good thing you picked up.'

‘Alex! How are you? Where are you? You won't believe what just happened to me!'

‘I'm in a hotel. My mobile's ruined. From now on, it'll be impossible to get in touch with me, but … I figured out what Jenny was talking about, I know what the belt is. But tell me what happened to you.'

‘It's a mess here, man. I'm pretty sure you're in danger, but I can't tell you much more than that, unfortunately.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Listen … I talked to someone, someone who might have some answers for us.'

‘I don't even know what the questions are.'

‘Listen to me. I'm afraid things are getting serious. This person told me that you have to find Memoria before it's too late. Don't ask me what it is, I have no idea. It might be a place. He said that you'll find it, and he talked about it as if it were somewhere people like you and Jenny could reach.'

Marco told him how he'd established contact with Thomas Becker and the information that the man had given him. According to Becker, travelling between dimensions generated a special power, a power available only to those who were capable of that feat.

‘This is ridiculous. Why should we be trying to find a path to survival? What are we trying to save ourselves from? Did he tell you anything else?' asked Alex, baffled by the new information.

Marco hesitated for a few seconds before answering. After all, Becker had told him that they would die.
They can save themselves, but death will take them all the same.
Marco didn't feel capable of repeating these words to his friend. Or maybe he refused to believe them.

‘That's all he told me … but tell me about what Jenny said. What did you find out?'

‘She was talking about Orion's Belt, that strip of three stars close to one another that you can see with the naked eye … I don't know, but I think that she means I have to wait for nightfall. And for the sky to clear. The rain is only just stopping now. Maybe tomorrow … But one thing's for sure: I have no idea what I should do.'

‘The girl in the vision said
Our mind is the key.
Maybe you have to summon the focus to …
travel
, isn't that how she put it?'

‘Travel. Which means the journey …'

‘… will take you to her!'

‘But why did she ask me if I remember, Marco? What am I supposed to remember?'

‘Clearly you and Jenny have been linked together for a long time — a very long time.'

Alex said goodbye to his friend and hung up, then threw himself facedown on the soft blanket. Half naked, his muscles throbbing and his neck aching, he reached one hand out to the light switch. He closed his eyes and abandoned himself to the darkness.

He couldn't get to sleep.

An image kept surfacing in his mind. It was Jenny's necklace.

The triskelion. Her magical necklace.

He screwed his eyes shut as if trying to concentrate, with the Celtic symbol imprinted in his mind.

Listen to me, I'm begging you!
he thought intensely, repeating the phrase over and over.

Jenny was at her desk, her science textbook open in front of her, her pencil clamped between her lips.

Alex's voice barrelled at her like a speeding train, hitting her face-on and making her pupils widen as she desperately gripped the edge of her desk.

Not again … stop it! Leave me alone, for God's sake. You don't exist.

I do exist, Jenny!

Stop it! Go away, I don't want to fall for any more tricks. I'm not crazy …

Neither of us is! Listen to me, just listen to me this once. I saw your necklace. I don't know if you wear it anymore … but I saw it! It's a triskelion, a Celtic symbol
.

Jenny was stunned. In front of her, the blank monitor of her computer looked like a dark mirror gleaming with her distraught reflection. Around her neck, as always, was the thin chain of the necklace that Alex was describing. Her good-luck charm.

How do you know that?

Stop thinking that you're crazy. I'm asking you to trust me, and to do a little research. My name is Alessandro Loria, I live in Milan, in Italy. I must be there, somewhere in your world. Try to find me, Jenny …

Alex's voice grew fainter. His last words were swallowed up by a distant echo.

Jenny went on thinking about a single question, without knowing whether Alex had heard it or not: what did he mean by
somewhere in your world
?

She lurched to her feet. She ran to the door of her bedroom, threw it open, and headed for the bathroom. When she was in front of the mirror, she planted both hands on the edge of the sink and stared intensely at her reflection.

‘I'm not crazy!' she shouted.

Back in her bedroom, she turned on her MacBook. She started looking for Alex's name on the internet.
He's Italian, just like my mum
,
she thought as she clicked through page after page in a growing frenzy. She found dozens of profiles on Facebook, a few comments on sports blogs, and several other links that no longer worked. Most of the pictures had nothing at all to do with the visions that she'd had in the past, during her fainting spells. Other avatars showed soccer players, movie stars, or comic-book characters. The matches on the blogs, on the other hand, weren't connected to any email addresses or accounts.

After an hour and a half of futile attempts, her eyes suddenly lit up. Among the links on the fifteenth page of Google results, one led to the website of a high-school basketball team. Jenny clicked on that one. Her heart started racing furiously in her chest: on the page with the individual players, one of the captions read,
Alex Loria, born in 1998
. There was also a low-res photo that showed him in his training gear, with the blond fringe that Jenny, in certain bleary moments during her first attacks, had managed to glimpse and now recognised.

Damn, this really looks like him …
Her gaze seemed to be hypnotised by that image. His age and appearance both matched. Jenny clicked on a link marked
Contact
and picked up the phone, nervous and on edge. In a few seconds, she had dialled the basketball team's phone number.

‘Polisportiva Senna,
buongiorno
…' the scratchy voice suddenly burst out of her earpiece.