Dark Matter

This long chapter switches back to Jason’s first-person present-tense narrative.

Jason wakes up in a cell chained to a metal-framed bed. He is groggy from being sedated. Leighton comes in wearing a tuxedo and tells Jason he is sorry they had to handle him in this way, but they didn’t anticipate how disturbed he would be after his return. They had to kill Daniela in case Jason told her about their research. Jason writhes and curses Leighton, but he cannot move.

Jason decides to calm down and pretend that he is the version of himself that they think he is—the prestigious scientist who engineered this project. Leighton promises to help him get his memories back, and Jason worries that maybe the life he remembers never really happened.

Leighton gives him a tour of Velocity Laboratories, starting with sublevel four. It’s a four-level facility: “Gym, rec room, mess hall, and a few dormitories on one. Labs, cleanrooms, conference rooms on two. Sublevel three is dedicated to fabrication. Four is the infirmary and mission control” (120). Past a security door, they enter a hangar that houses a 12-foot metal cube. Jason is in awe. They walk around the box, and Leighton tells him they found Jason lying next to it, unconscious.

After Jason won the Pavia Prize 11 years ago, Velocity gave him 5 billion dollars to build the cube. The concept is based on the thought experiment Schrödinger’s cat, the idea that something can exist in paradoxical states until otherwise confirmed: If something were to be inside the box unobserved, it could exist in a state of multiple possibilities, or “superposition.” During his graduate work, Jason had envisioned a one-inch version of the box; he is floored that a version of him had the audacity to create a life-sized version. Leighton tells him that two other “pilots” went into the box after him, but neither has returned. He shows Jason footage of him entering the box 14 months ago—he is wearing a space suit and waving at the camera. Footage from three days ago shows him stumbling out of the box and collapsing on the floor. People in hazmat suits rush over and put him on a gurney.

Leighton shows Jason to a comfortable suite on sublevel one where he can rest and go over his research: A laptop has all of Jason’s data from the last 15 years. Jason is engrossed in the research, but he keeps flashing back to the image of Daniela being shot. He tries to remember his other life.

The next morning, the lab psychiatrist Amanda Lucas shows up at his door. She brings him coffee and asks him questions to assess his mental state. She tells Jason he has amnesia from the extreme stress of his experience and that through therapy, she will help him get his memories back. She assures him that everyone at the facility is his friend—including her—and they are all rooting for his recovery. Before leaving, she asks Jason for the name of the woman “you think you saw murdered” (131). The comment unsettles Jason, and he replies he did see her murdered, and her name is Daniela Vargas.

Jason reads a section of his notes in which he posits that we exist in a 5-dimensional multiverse but our brains can only perceive our existence in one universe. It is the “Many Worlds” theory of quantum mechanics.

Leighton leads Jason to the interview room where he was first debriefed, locks the door, and tells Jason to tell the truth about who he really is. The guard who shot Daniela brings in a beat-up Ryan, who revealed Jason’s story about his other life. Leighton thinks Jason is not the person who went into the box. Jason refuses to talk, and someone knocks him out and injects something into his neck.

When he wakes up, he is in a cell with Ryan, who asks how Jason used the compound he produced. Jason tells him the box is a gateway to the multiverse and that he is from another world. The psychoactive compound Ryan created allows people’s minds to experience multiple realities at once, like Schrodinger’s cat. Ryan can’t believe Jason used his research in this way: “So you figured out a way to turn a human being into a living and dead cat? That’s… terrifying” (140). Leighton takes Ryan away: Ryan knows too much and must be killed.

Jason realizes that the man who abducted him is the version of him from this world: He knew all along but didn’t want to admit it. That man wanted Jason’s life with Daniela and Charlie.

Amanda arrives to break Jason out of his cell. She tells him that the only way out is to use the cube. Leighton and his men pursue them, but they make it to the cube in time and inject themselves with the compound, which Amanda has brought along in a backpack. They pass out.