Parallel

find Dr. Mann in the F. W. Olin Science Center, a contemporary gray brick building near the center of campus, five minutes into an hour-long cosmology lecture. I drop my bag on a bench in the rotunda, prepared to wait, but Caitlin has already disappeared into the lecture hall. I slip in quietly behind her.
    Dr. Mann sees me come in and smiles with recognition. He knows who I am. I, on the other hand, have only a vague image of him in my mind, one that doesn’t do the man justice. I pictured his wild gray hair and ink-stained fingers, but not the intensity of his cerulean eyes. For someone who has to be in his seventies, Dr. Mann has the gusto of a much younger man.
    His lecture is surprisingly straightforward. He passes out copies of the syllabus, then launches into what feels like a bedtime story, taking us through the evolution of modern cosmological thought. It’s a compelling tale, made even more so by our storyteller’s German-accented delivery. In fact, I’m so completely absorbed in the narrative that when he stops midsentence and says he’ll see us on Friday, I’m startled. Have we really been sitting here for fifty-five minutes?
    “Come on,” Caitlin says. “Let’s catch him before he leaves.”
    Dr. Mann is erasing his whiteboard as we approach. “Professor?” Caitlin says politely.
    The old man turns and smiles. Up close, he looks more like a sweet grandfather than a nutty professor, and he smells like butterscotch candy. I like him immediately.
    “I’m Caitlin Moss,” Caitlin says, extending her hand. “I was a student at Brookside—”
    “ The student, if the impression you made on the faculty is any indication,” Dr. Mann replies warmly, grasping her hand in both of his. “In four years at Brookside, you received top marks in more than a dozen science courses and won three national physics prizes, yes?”
    Caitlin grins. “That’s me.”
    The professor turns to me now, and his smile broadens. “Ms. Barnes! What a pleasant surprise.” He takes my hand in both of his. “What brings you to New London?” He winks conspiratorially. “Bored at Yale already?”
    “We, uh . . .” I look at Caitlin for help.
    “We were hoping you might walk us through the basics of cosmic entanglement,” she says. The old man’s eyebrows shoot up. This clearly isn’t a request he gets often. “Specifically,” Caitlin adds, “the concept of shared reality.” Dr. Mann looks delighted by her request.
    “It’s for a creative writing project,” I blurt out. In my peripheral vision, I see Caitlin roll her eyes.
    “It’d be my pleasure,” Dr. Mann replies. “Where should I begin?”
    “The global tremor,” Caitlin says.
    “Certainly,” Dr. Mann replies. “I believe the tremor was caused by what I’ll call an ‘interdimensional collision.’ Simply put, two parallel worlds crashing into each other.”
    “But why ?” I ask. “Isn’t it more likely that it was just a big earthquake?”
    Dr. Mann’s blue eyes sparkle. “Ah, but we know for certain that it wasn’t,” he says. “Earthquakes cause a certain seismic wave pattern. What happened last September simply did not.” I swallow hard, my throat suddenly very dry. “If the tremor was indeed a collision,” Dr. Mann continues, “then I believe the force of the impact may have created a link between our world and the parallel world with which we collided, resulting in an effect similar to the quantum entanglement of particles.”
    I gawk at him. “Huh?”
    Dr. Mann chuckles. “A perfectly appropriate reaction. It’s one of the greatest oddities in quantum mechanics,” he explains. “When subatomic particles bounce off one another with enough force, they become linked in a way that is not bound by space or time. Whatever happens to one particle begins to have an effect on the other.” The old man smiles. “Einstein called it spukhafte Fernwirkung .” His voice is quieter now, almost a whisper. “The ‘spooky action at a distance.’”
    Though the room is warm, I shiver.
    “And you believe the same thing would happen if two parallel worlds were to collide?” prompts Caitlin.
    “Exactly,” Dr. Mann replies with a definitive nod. “I believe that the force of the collision would cause the physical reality of one world to overtake the physical reality of the other, leaving the worlds—and their inhabitants—in a permanently entangled state.”
    Permanently entangled. It sounds ominous, but what does it mean? My