When You and I Collide - Hardcover

Norris, Kate

 
9780593203033: When You and I Collide
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593203038 ISBN 13: 9780593203033
Verlag: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A race against time, war, and the very fabric of the universe itself, perfect for fans of Sliding Doors and 11/22/63.

Sixteen-year-old Winnie Schulde has always seen splits--the moment when two possible outcomes diverge, one in her universe and one in another. Multiverse theory, Winnie knows, is all too real, though she has never been anything but an observer of its implications--a secret she keeps hidden from just about everyone, as she knows the uses to which it might be put in the midst of a raging WWII. But her physicist father, wrapped up in his research and made cruel by his grief after the loss of Winnie's mother, believes that if he pushes her hard enough, she can choose one split over another and maybe, just maybe, change their future and their past. 

Winnie is certain that her father's theories are just that, so she plays along in an effort to placate him. Until one day, when her father's experiment goes wrong and Scott, the kind and handsome lab assistant Winnie loves from afar, is seriously injured. Without meaning to, Winnie chooses the split where Scott is unharmed. And in doing so, finds herself pulled into another universe, an alternate reality. One that already has a Winnie. 

In this darkly thrilling novel that blends science and war with love and loss, some actions just can't be undone.


Praise for When You and I Collide:
 
"A serious tale of attempting reinvention at the cost of rending reality." --Kirkus Reviews

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kate Norris taught creative writing at The Ohio State University, and served as fiction editor of The Journal and as associate editor of The Ohio State University Press's Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Her short stories and nonfiction have appeared in One Teen Story, Iron Horse Review, Sycamore Review, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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“I’ve been thinking that what’s holding you back is a lack of motivation,” Father said, “but I’ve come up with a solution for that. We’re going to try a version of an experiment I believe you’re familiar with.” He gestured toward the corner. “Winifred, get inside the Faraday cage.”

Winnie eyed the cage anxiously. It was for her own protection, but it still made her nervous—being trapped. She swallowed her fear and stepped into the eight-by-eight cage of heavy metal mesh. The walls of the Faraday cage were grounded, preventing any charge from accumulating on its outside surface. Father could surround Winnie with an electric field, which he theorized might act as a medium for her ability, and inside the cage, she would be perfectly safe.

Father was always careful to protect her from harm during their special experiments, just like he safeguarded all his difficult-to-replace equipment.

“Scott, there’s a cardboard box upstairs in the hall. Bring it down, please.” Scott retreated upstairs. After a few moments, he still hadn’t come back, and Winnie wondered if they’d finally reached his edge. She was relieved when she heard him coming down the stairs, but when he returned, his eyes were dark, and his mouth was set in a straight line. It was an expression she’d never seen him wear before.

Scott met Winnie’s eyes through the mesh of the cage, and it was plain as day—he’d stayed for her. But he didn’t want to be there.

“Well, bring it out,” Father said.

Scott opened the box and lifted out a small black kitten. He cradled it to his chest and stroked its fur absentmindedly. The kitten let out a tiny mew.

This was too much.

She could easily guess the experiment Father had planned. It was awful. And how could she pretend it had never happened, with Scott there as witness?

Schrödinger’s cat-in-a-box thought experiment was quite well known. Imagine a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source in a sealed box. If a single atom of the radioactive source decayed, a monitor would register the radioactivity and the flask would be shattered, killing the cat. There was equal probability that an atom would or would not decay over the course of an hour. Within that time frame, the cat must be considered both alive and dead. It was all theoretical, of course, or at least that was what Schrödinger’s paper supposed, and what other scientists assumed.

Winnie knew better.

This was a representation of how splits happened. The cat really was both alive and dead, just in separate realities.

“You’re both familiar with Schrödinger’s famous paradox, I assume?” Father asked.

“It’s meant to be a thought experiment,” Scott said, speaking through his teeth, “not an elaborate method of exterminating house pets.”

Winnie braced for Father to explode, but he just laughed.

“Father, please—”

His smile froze, and he spoke flatly. “Perhaps this wouldn’t be necessary if we’d had any measure of success—if you’d tried a little harder.” Father turned to Scott. “Put it on the workbench,” he said, pointing. “There is fine.” He looked back atWinnie. “We don’t need any elaborate setup, do we? Geiger counters, uranium, and the like? Schrödinger always was more of a showman than a scientist, and there is, as they say, more than one way to kill a cat. As for our element of chance, a coin toss should work just fine.”

Father had made her play this game before, but without such grim stakes. He flipped a coin, then checked the results without letting her see. After years of training her focus, Winnie could usually force herself to see the splinter of the toss, and then she would know that if it was tails in that other world, it was heads in her own, or vice versa. The next step—the one she’d never succeeded at—was changing the results of the coin toss that had already happened. After she tried to will it different, Father would look again, hoping to see a new result, and be disappointed.

Winnie didn’t really think she could affect the outcome of something that had already happened like that. Then again, Father always told her that she was small-minded to cling to a linear idea of time. Space and time were a continuum, and relative to the observer. She was a different sort of observer, wasn’t she? So, Father said, why wouldn’t she be able to use her observations to influence time as well as matter?

Winnie glanced at the kitten, looking so forlorn sitting there on the workbench. It didn’t know it should run away. It was such a baby, she didn’t even think it would be able to.

Would Father really kill it if Winnie failed to change the results of the coin toss? She looked at him—the wildness in his eyes.

Yes.

He would.

Winnie would try her hardest. That was the most she could do.

“All right,” Father said. “Put your hands on the receivers.” Winnie took hold of the metal rods that measured the electrical activity in her own body. “Scott, the circuit, please.”

Scott stood there a moment, looking at her, his expression one of confusion and pity—exactly what she’d wanted to avoid. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

Then he flipped the circuit, flooding the Faraday cage with current. Electricity would saturate the metal mesh surface, then harmlessly bleed back into the earth below through the grounding wire.
Father tossed the coin in the air, caught it, and placed it, covered, on the back of his hand. He glanced at the face of the coin himself without letting Scott or Winnie see, but Winnie didn’t need to look to know. She’d caught the splinter as soon as the coin was tossed—it was heads there. So, tails in her own world.

“All right, Winifred. I want you to change the result. Now concentrate, and tell me when you’re ready.”

Even though Winnie thought she had no control over the coin, she still had to try. She closed her eyes so tight they hurt and focused as hard as she could. She could hear the kitten meowing on the bench a few feet away. Why did Father do these things?

But she knew. She knew.

Winnie squeezed the receivers in her hands and wished for a different outcome. Heads, heads, heads, she repeated fervently in her mind.

“Enough—five seconds and I’m looking, whether you’re ready or not.”

One of the machines began to whine, but she pushed the noise aside. Do it, she told herself fiercely. Just force it to happen.

Winnie could hear the cage humming. She felt a sort of pop below her breastbone. Her eyes flew open. Something was wrong. If something was wrong with the cage, all that current could touch her, stick out a forked tongue and take a taste . . .

“Scott?” Winnie cried shrilly, her head full of images of being electrocuted, burnt to a crisp. “Scott! I think something’s wrong!”

Scott hurried close. “It’s buzzing.” He bent over to take a closer look at something, then immediately jumped up. “The grounding wire—it’s frayed! Professor Schulde, cut the power!”

But it was too late. There was too much current to be contained, and with the grounding compromised, nowhere for all that energy to go. Electricity jumped off the Faraday cage in a blinding arc—how could something so dangerous be so pretty?—and Scott was right there, the quickest path to the ground.

Winnie...

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Verlag
Viking Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593203038
ISBN 13 
9780593203033
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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