How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe Part 11

I am also very grateful to: Marty Asher, for his invaluable insight, help, and guidance, as well as Andy Hughes, for his production vision and helping to make the Book from Nowhere a reality.

As well as Dan Frank, Patricia Johnson, Chris Gillespie, Edward Kastenmeier, Marci Lewis, John Gall, Wesley Gott, Altie Karper, Catherine Courtade, Kathleen Fridella, Florence Lui, Jeff Alexander, Zack Wagman, Danny Yanez, Harriett Alida Lye, W. M. Akers, Peter Mendelsund, Joshua Raab, and all the others at Vintage/Anchor, Pantheon, and the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group who have lent their wizardry and wisdom to the making of this book. In the U.K. universe, Nicolas Cheetham, Rina Gill, Becci Sharpe, and Adam Simpson at Corvus have created an alternate and equal version of the TM-31. It is a privilege and an education to work with so many gifted people.

And to Richard Powers, Leslie Shipman, Harold Augenbraum, and the National Book Foundation for encouragement that is difficult to overstate. This weird, mumbly guy scribbles alone under a damp rock, and then, out of nowhere, people like you notice him? Still unbelievable to me, and it always will be.

And I must not forget to thank: Val Jue, for the gifts of time and peace of mind, Robert Jue for computer expertise, and Rose Lowe. Also, Howard Sanders, Sarah Shepard, Tyler Johnson, the Taiwanese United Fund, and Taiwanese American Citizens League for enthusiasm and support.

Admiration for and apologies to: Douglas Hofstadter for G.o.del, Escher, Bach G.o.del, Escher, Bach, a book I will never get over, and never stop reading.

And to David Deutsch, for writing The Fabric of Reality The Fabric of Reality, a book so fascinating that the only way I could even attempt to get over it was to write a novel based on a complete misunderstanding of your ideas.

I wish I had: A time machine while writing these acknowledgments so I could go into the future and see who else is going to help make this into a book. I'm sorry I can't thank you by name, but please accept my categorical grat.i.tude, all you wonderful future-people.

Finally: To Kelvin, for always being so good to me, and for teaching me new things about stories. To Sophia, for reminding me how to enjoy a story. To Dylan, for being a great sleeper and a great guy all-around. To Mochi, for your sad-eyed company. To my father, Jin Yu, a very good engineer and an even better dad, and my mother, Betty Yu, for her inventiveness and fire. And to Mich.e.l.le, for always being the best version of yourself, even when I'm my worst.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Yu received the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award for his story collection Third Cla.s.s Superhero Third Cla.s.s Superhero, and he has also received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. His work has been published in the Harvard Review Harvard Review, The Gettysburg Review The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. This is his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Mich.e.l.le, and their two children.

ORIGIN STORY: UNIVERSE 13

I turned thirteen the summer the world fell apart. I was taking an early morning physics course at the high school that got out every day at eleven. Afterward, I'd swing by the park and pick up my kid brother and we would walk over to the community pool and jump in, just as the day was turning hot. We'd race end to end, seeing who could hold his breath longer, and when we got bored, we would beach ourselves on the concrete lip, feet and calves still in the water, and stay as still as possible, trying to stay within our own water shadows, avoiding the hot surface around us, protected by the regions under us, our damp shaded self-outlines our only defense against the rest of the world.

One day at the end of the summer, two weeks before the fall, we came back from the pool and my mom and dad were both home from work. It was the middle of the day. They were sitting at the kitchen table across from each other, neither of them looking at one another. The air was heavy and still, and filled with whatever they had been saying to each other just as we'd come through the door. I didn't say anything but my brother (being younger and braver than I was or ever will be) said, it's never going to be the same again, is it. My father picked him up and put him on his lap, and, in some awkward attempt to be part of that exchange, to show my father that I was thinking of him, I pointed out to my dad that my brother's trunks were all wet. My dad looked at me, evenly, without the warmth he reserved for my brother, and said, no one cares. No one cares about that.

That night my mother let us order a pizza and eat it in front of the television. She tied her hair up with a small scarf, which made her look every bit as pretty as she actually was, and she wore shorts.

"Mom, you look like a girl," my brother said. "Are you?" My mom laughed and took a sip of what she was drinking. We watched the TV together quietly for a while. She looked at me and I must have looked like I was wondering if I'd ever see my dad again, because she tugged on my ear and said, hey bud, it's not the end of the world. But it was. Just then, the program was interrupted by a news flash. They were showing how the city had split itself in two. The reporter was standing at the faultline, explaining that it was not like an earthquake, in that there was not an actual line you could draw showing where the schism had taken place. It was not land, or a tectonic plate or even the whole world splitting. It was s.p.a.ce and time itself, it was reality itself. I didn't understand it at the time, of course, but it was more a conceptual event than anything. It was also not like an earthquake in that it would not be violent or sudden. It would be invisible and silent and take place over years. The perceptible part of the process had just begun, but in reality, it had happened gradually, and then all at once. A fissure, a tiny crack somewhere, unnoticed, and then it grew, micron by micron, along the path of least resistance, and then it spidered out into an uncountable number of capillaries and then, in an instant, the first world, the undivided city, broke apart into two, the low world falling out of the high one.