Another hologram materializes as we walk toward the edge: The Glass Tower is the tallest building in the Midwest and the third tallest in America.
It’s freezing up here, the breeze steadily coming off the lake. The air feels thinner sliding into my lungs, and I register a twinge of light-headedness, but whether from the lack of oxygen or from vertigo, I’m not sure.
We reach the anti-suicide railing.
My head swims. My stomach churns.
It’s almost too much to take in—the sparkling sprawl of the city and the profusion of neighboring towers and the vast expanse of the lake, which I can see clear across into southern Michigan.
To the west and south, beyond the suburbs, the prairie glows in the morning light, a hundred miles away.
The tower sways.
Four states—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin—are visible on a clear day.
Standing on this work of art and imagination, I feel small in the best kind of way.
It’s enthralling to breathe the air of a world that could build something as beautiful as this.
Amanda is beside me, and we’re staring down the gorgeously feminine curve of the building. It’s serene and nearly silent up here.
The only sound is the lonely whisper of wind.
The noise of the streets below doesn’t reach us.
“Was all of this in your head?” I ask.
“Not consciously, but it all feels right somehow. Like a half-remembered dream.”
I gaze toward the northern neighborhoods, where Logan Square should be.
It doesn’t look anything like my home.
A few feet away, I see an old man standing behind his old wife, his gnarled hands on her shoulders as she peers through a telescope, which is pointed down at the most extraordinary Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen. A thousand feet tall, it looms over the lakeshore, right where Navy Pier should be.
I think of Daniela.
Of what this other Jason—Jason2—might be doing at this moment.
What he might be doing to my wife.
Anger, fear, and homesickness envelop me like an illness.
This world, for all its grandeur, isn’t my home.
It isn’t even close.
AMPOULES REMAINING: 42
Down the dark corridor through this in-between place again, our footfalls echoing into infinity.
I’m holding the lantern and considering what I should write in the notebook when Amanda stops walking.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Listen.”
It becomes so quiet I can hear the escalated beating of my heart.
And then—something impossible.
A sound.
Far, far down the corridor.
Amanda looks at me.
She whispers, “What the fuck?”
I stare into the darkness.
There’s nothing to see but the dwindling light of the lantern refracting off the repeating walls.
The sound becomes louder from moment to moment.
It’s the shuffling of footsteps.
I say, “Someone’s coming.”
“How is that possible?”
Movement edges into the periphery of illumination.
A figure coming toward us.
I take a step back, and as they draw closer, I’m tempted to run, but where would I go?
Might as well face it.
It’s a man.
He’s naked.
His skin covered in mud or dirt or…
Blood.
Definitely blood.
He reeks of it.
As if he rolled around in a pool.
His hair is matted, face smeared and caked so heavily it makes the whites of his eyes stand out.
His hands are trembling and his fingers curled in tightly, like they’ve been clawing desperately at something.
Only when he’s ten feet away do I realize this man is me.
I step out of his way, backing up against the nearest wall to give him the widest possible berth.
As he staggers past, his eyes fix on mine.
I’m not even sure he sees me.
He looks shell-shocked.
Hollowed out.
Like he just stepped out of hell.
Across his back and shoulders, chunks of flesh have been ripped out.
I say, “What happened to you?”
He stops and stares at me, and then opens his mouth and makes the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard—a throat-scarring scream.
As his voice echoes, Amanda grabs my arm and pulls me away.
He doesn’t follow.
Just watches us go, and then shuffles on down the corridor.
Into that endless dark.
—
Thirty minutes later, I’m sitting in front of a door that’s identical to all the rest, trying to wipe my mind and emotional register of what I just saw in the corridor.
Taking a notebook from the backpack, I open it, the pen poised in my hand.
I don’t even have to think.
I simply write the words:
I want to go home.
—
I wonder, Is this what God feels? The rush that comes from having literally spoken a world into existence? And yes, this world already existed, but I connected us to it. Out of all the possible worlds, I found this one, and it’s exactly, at least from the doorway of the box, what I wanted.
I step down, glass crunching on the concrete beneath my shoes as afternoon light pours through the windows high above, striking a row of iron generators from another era.