Pit. Pat.

More tears fell, splashed against the cardboard between my feet like dirt onto a coffin. In many ways, it was a coffin. As I reached down to open it, Ian grabbed my hand, his pretty face ashen, his wide blue eyes glistening with tears.

'No, don't...' I shook my head and tried to pull my hand away, but his grip was insistent. 'If you don't look then it might still...'

I shook my head in exasperation.

'Jesus Christ, not fucking Schrödinger's cat again! What a fucking heartless time to bring that up!'

Though my voice was hushed, the expletives were somehow amplified and rang around the hard-walled waiting area. As one creature, the room shuffled its feet, shifted in chairs, averted its eyes. Ian was instantly apologetic.

'Sorry, Alex. I didn't mean...'

I ignored him, hissed a cutting repost.

'So if I'd never asked if you were gay, you still might not be?'

Ian, along with the rest of the room, cringed at that, but unlike the rest of the room, he instantly forgave me, spoke quietly yet clearly, as though we were the only ones present.

'No, I'd still be gay. That will never change,' he smiled, 'much like Schrödinger's cat will always be a cat.'

The silence was punctuated by a fluttering of feathers from the covered cage that sat in the chair to my right. 

'Why will it?'

My beautiful young friend clasped his long fingers about his knees, and turned his searching face towards me.

'Because that's not the thing in question. Listen: in his thought experiment, Schrödinger had a cat in a box. That's the one thing he was sure of. The uncertainty lay in whether the cat were alive...' After glancing around and seeing that all eyes were on him, he coloured slightly, leaned closer and lowered his voice, 'whether the cat were alive or dead. Till he opened the box he couldn't be sure, so the cat was effectively in both states simultaneously. Alex, I've explained all this before...'

Again I was dismissive.

'Yeah, I know. Too many fucking times.' He again looked hurt, but what did he expect? I was upset, about to be distraught, and his unfortunate scientific metaphor was too close to the bone. 'But what's the relevance of the fucking cat?'

He breathed deeply, clearly losing patience with my inappropriately colourful vocabulary.

'The relevance, my darling Alex, is that in the quantum world, in the province of the unimaginably small, a particle's properties - it's spin, say, or its position - can be many different values at once. It's only when a measurement is taken that we get a single reading. It's like...' he stared so intently into the distance that, for a moment, I followed his gaze, 'like our eyes are closed and the universe only makes up its mind how things will be at the moment we open them.'

I pretended to be unimpressed with this most remarkable simile.

'So?'

'So the cat in Schrödinger's box is both dead and alive until someone opens it to check.'

From the ether, I somehow spontaneously formulated a bawdy scientific joke.

'Well then, I'm Schödinger's cake - you can have me and eat me at the same time.'

Ian didn't laugh at that, but nodded and smiled broadly, a look of curious admiration shading his face, the like of which I had never seen. He growled.

'I fucking love you, Alex.'

He leaned back in his rickety chair, rested his head against the sickly green wall and slid down in his seat. His ripped blue jeans rode up, making his bulging crotch even more impressive than usual. The tight white T-shirt also rode up, exposing a tanned crescent of his taut abs. Females old and young were staring. Men were staring too. And it was no secret as to why: from the top of his spiky platinum head to the tips of his turquoise toenails, he was gorgeous. Not only that, but he was a fucking genius too. Maths, physics, English, drama, music, football, nothing seemed too difficult for him, no skill was beyond him. I loved him, and it was plain to all that he loved me too. But not like that. Not in a boy-loves-girl way. He fucked men. He sucked men. He was regularly fucked and sucked by men, and habitually told me all about it in lurid graphic detail. And though I giggled and rolled my eyes, gasped extravagantly and punched his arm playfully, it broke my heart.

Lifting his lithe arms and spreading his elbows like wings, he rested his hands behind his head and spoke quietly, as though to a particularly attentive ceiling.

'I know it's just far-fetched stupid stuff to you, but it means a lot to me. I believe it. I thought you of all people would understand.'

I rested my elbows on my bare knees and leaned forwards while nudging the box mere millimetres with a tatty old red Vann, till it aligned perfectly with the vinyl floor tiles. I turned my head to him, the pressing reason for our being there threatening to bring tears to my eyes once more. I squeezed them down and curled my lip.

'Believe it? You talk like it's a fucking religion or something.'

He was matter of fact.

'It is.'

More ruffled feathers. A growl. A distant muffled meow. Ian sat forwards, his elbows-on-knees posture mimicking my own, and pressed his body close to mine. He smelt delicious, a heady mix of manliness and femininity. His warm breath tickled my ear and, as he spoke, my twitching cunt oozed.

'Religion gives people rules to live by and in a similar way quantum mechanics dictates how I act. It reins me in, makes me deliberate on the...' he glanced around the motley crowd of hushed humans and their sickly beasts, 'the consequences of my actions.'

The stark contrast between my body's demands and my mind's impotence both frustrated and angered me, turned my response into an excessive sneer.

'Yeah? Like when?'

But I knew when, knew it with all my heart.

Whenever he spoke. Whenever he acted. Whatever he said or did, it was obvious he had thought it through, considered its effect on those around him. So did he know my lips were aching to kiss him? Know my knickers were dripping wet for him? No. They were effects he could never have imagined, for I had never given him reason.

'Like... all the time.' His whispered voice bubbled with passion. 'When Everett first proposed the multiverse, he was laughed at, scorned by his peers, but now many scientists are convinced it is true. It explains - and so elegantly - many quantum phenomena that we encounter...' His emphasis on 'we' built a momentary wall between us, a towering academic wall I could never climb. He sensed it. Smiled weakly. Recanted. 'Well, when I say we, I mean they, really.'

'But if the multiverse is real,' I drew on everything I knew, everything I could recall of our past conversations on the subject, 'then there is an infinite number of yous and an infinite number of mes, all doing everything possible. So why curb anything you do? Why don't you be the one who does the most extreme things? If the multiverse is true then someone's doing them somewhere, so why not you?'

He wrapped a strong arm around my slender shoulders and pulled me playfully to him.

'Why do you think?'

Though I knew he didn't intend to, he suddenly sounded smug, patronising, and I wasn't going to let the strangers around us think he could treat me like that. I wriggled away; threw his arm back at him.

'Fuck you.'

That was uncalled for. Now we both felt even worse than when we first walked in here, a state I would have thought impossible ten minutes ago. I knew my best friend would never do a single thing to upset me, never say a word without first taking into account its effect on me. He was lovely. And I was a bitch. An unaccustomed word crossed my lips.

'Sorry.'

I never apologised. He was taken aback, risked hugging me again then pecked my cheek as if in gratitude.

'It's okay.' A devilish smile suddenly lit his face. 'I'm used to it...'

The words hung in the air between us, a truth and a lie simultaneously existing together in the same place and time.

He sat forwards as before, elbows on knees, head bowed, and I copied him, rubbed shoulders with him.

'So like I said, why...' I felt contrite enough to risk showing my ignorance, 'if everything is happening somewhere, why don't you just do what the fuck you like?'

Again the expletive seemed inordinately loud. An old lady coughed, nodded indignantly in the direction of her blushing granddaughter and her slobbering labrador. I mouthed a quick 'sorry' then turned back to Ian just in time for his response. 

'Because what I do affects so many other mes. They've come to feel like brothers to me. I am responsible for them. Decisions I make put them at risk. I owe it to them - just like I owe it to everyone I come across in this universe - to make good decisions that benefit as many as possible. See?'

I sniffed.

'You've done it again, made science sound like religion.'

Thought twisted his perfect face and a smile flashed his perfect teeth.

'It is spiritual. There's no doubt about it.'

My tiny brain whirred. I took a chance, acted on an impulse

'So somewhere,' I surreptitiously slid a hand across his right thigh and cupped his generous genitalia, 'there's an Ian who is enjoying this?'

He smiled wryly and drawled like a drag queen.

'Darling, I sincerely hope so. You have a lovely touch.'

I squeezed and waited, squeezed again, but felt nothing. No response. Never before in my life had a cock failed to twitch at my touch. Unexpected tears streamed down my face, though with his face buried in my blonde curls he would never know. My heart thudded at his words.

'And somewhere, I believe, there is even an Alex enjoying this.'

His left hand mirrored my right; its fingers burrowed between my open thighs. I gasped. Shuddered. Barely a millimetre of material separated his probing middle finger from my aching clit. While pissing lubrication, I issued a long, barely-audible moan then shook my incredulous head as nonchalantly as I could.

'Nah, not from a fucking queen like you.'

'Next!'

The normally welcome word chilled me. With Ian's arm around my shoulders all the while, I stood slowly, picked up my box and shuffled towards the open door, the overpowering odour of disinfectant suddenly stinging my nose and eyes. In the next room, I knew my white-coated stepdad was waiting, waiting to give me the bad news, offering me the decision that was, in reality, no decision at all. Somewhere in the multiverse, he had a cure, a miraculous cure he had just this moment invented. Elsewhere, Puss had spontaneously healed somewhere between home and here, and would stretch, purr and roll over, her bright intelligent eyes again seeking my undivided devotion, my unconditional approval. In yet another parallel reality, my beautiful boyfriend Ian would kiss my mouth in joy at Pussy's incredible good fortune, then drive me home in his Ferrari to our mansion on the hill and fuck me stupid till the twin suns rose.

Meanwhile, in this world, in this reality from which death is the only escape, I handed over the box with hollow guts and a heart the mass of every parallel universe totalled together. In this reality, it was the day my stepdad destroyed my beautiful Pussy.

*