Many Worlds of Albie Bright Read online

  Pulling the box on its side to make it easier to climb inside, I plug the Geiger counter into the laptop’s USB port. Then I put both of these and the banana back inside the box.

  Peering inside, I can see the digital readout on the Geiger counter screen showing a big fat zero CPM. CPM stands for Clicks per Minute – the higher the level of radiation, the more clicks you get from the Geiger counter. So there’s no sign yet of the banana going into meltdown. It’s time to start the experiment.

  I’m just about to climb inside the box when a teeny-tiny worry stops me. From watching my dad’s TV show I know there’s loads of scientists who have experimented on themselves and this hasn’t always gone well. To test his theory that lightning and electricity were the same, a scientist called Benjamin Franklin flew his kite in the middle of a thunderstorm. He proved himself right when a huge bolt of lightning hit the kite and gave him a massive electric shock! Then there was the guy who strapped himself to a rocket-powered sled when he wanted to find out what would happen when a human being travelled faster than the speed of sound and nearly popped his eyeballs out of his head.

  Experimenting on yourself can be a risky business. How can I be sure exactly what will happen to me when I close the lid of the box? I need to find a safe way to test the Quantum Banana Theory.

  This is when I have my second Eureka moment. Maybe Schrödinger had the right idea after all. Before I climb into a cardboard box with a radioactive banana, I need to find a cat to try it out first.

  The only pet I’ve ever had was a hamster called Hawking. Mum and Dad gave him to me for my tenth birthday to try and make up for the fact we’d had to move back to Clackthorpe. Dad suggested his name, although I sometimes called him Hawkeye because I thought that sounded cooler.

  Unfortunately next door’s cat – Dylan – must have thought his name was Hamburger, because when I set up a hamster run for Hawking in the back garden Dylan jumped over the fence and ate him. I’d only turned my back for a second, but when I turned round Dylan was in the middle of the run munching on my hamster. When she heard me shout, Mum rushed out to try and get Dylan to drop him, but by the time he did it was too late for Hawking.

  It’s funny, I think I cried more when Hawking died than I did when Mum passed away. It’s not that I loved my hamster more than my mum. To be honest, he was a bit annoying sometimes when he was chugging round his squeaky wheel when I was trying to get to sleep. I think it was because when I saw him on the grass after Dylan had stalked off, I realised that there wasn’t anything I could do to put things right. Not like now.

  Dylan belongs to Mrs Carrington – the mad old lady who lives next door. You never see a bird land in our back garden any more out of fear that Dylan might be lurking somewhere in the bushes, waiting to pounce. And as for any sparrows too stupid to read the “BEWARE OF THE CAT” sign on Mrs Carrington’s back gate, the only sign they leave behind is a tomato-ketchup smear on the grass while Dylan prowls around picking feathers out of his teeth.

  Dylan’s even got a feline ASBO from the council. It says he has to be kept indoors on Tuesday mornings when the binmen are on their rounds. This is because Dylan scalped a binman with his claws when he disturbed him taking a kip on top of a recycling bin. Mrs Carrington came round to our house to complain about this and tried to get Mum and Dad to sign a petition to give Dylan back his freedom, but Dad was just about to take Mum to the hospital and he told Mrs Carrington he had more important things to worry about.

  When NASA decided to fly to the moon, they chose the toughest test pilots who would be able to survive the journey. If I was looking for a cat to test the Quantum Banana Theory then Dylan was the number-one candidate. The only problem was how would I get Dylan inside the box?

  On top of the pile of books next to my bed is one of my favourite books ever: Snake Mason’s Guide to Wild Survival. It’s the tie-in book from my favourite TV show – Wild Survival. Snake Mason is an adventurer who travels the world showing celebrities how to survive in the wild. He’s taught pop singers how to wrestle crocodiles, caught poisonous snakes with Premiership footballers and rescued reality TV stars from man-eating tigers. If I want to catch Dylan and live to tell the tale, then I need to follow the advice in Snake’s book.

  Flicking through the pages, I find a plan to catch a Bengal tiger by digging a trapping pit. This is a deep pit dug in the ground and covered with branches and leaves as camouflage. When the Bengal tiger takes a stroll through the jungle it steps on to the camouflaged branches and falls right into the trap. In the book, Snake says this is one of the best ways to catch a dangerous big cat.

  Now, I could dig a pit in the back garden, cover it with branches and leaves and just wait for Dylan to take his usual prowl across the lawn to wee in the flower beds and he’d fall right into my trap. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this without Grandad Joe spotting me and, besides, Dad would go spare if I dug up the lawn.

  So it’s the second part of Snake’s plan that catches my attention.

  To help you to capture this dangerous tiger, you need to lay a trail. Wild boar, goats and deer can be used as bait to tempt the tiger into your trap.

  I don’t think they make wild-boar-flavoured Kitekat, and the only goats and deer near here are at Stormbridge Wildlife Park. But maybe I can find something in the kitchen that will help me tempt Dylan inside the box.

  Heading downstairs, I hear the sound of Grandad Joe snoring. As I look inside the living room he’s fast asleep in his armchair, mouth open wide, as on the TV Doc Brown shows Marty McFly his DeLorean time machine. No need now to explain to Grandad why I’m looking for cat food not popcorn.

  I know from the “Pets” project we did in school that there’s a ton of food cats can’t eat. Chocolate, cheese, chewing gum – they’re all the ones that I know because Miss Benjamin gave me the letter “C” to research. I can’t remember the other ones, but as I look through the kitchen cupboards in search of cat treats I don’t want to risk picking something that’s going to poison Dylan. Not before he’s had a chance to test out the Quantum Banana Theory.

  I find what I’m looking for at the back of the cereal cupboard. A packet of LolCat TreatzTM with Chicken. Mum bought these when Mrs Carrington asked us to look after Dylan while she was going to visit her sister up in Hull. But then the Hawking incident happened and Mum told Mrs Carrington that she didn’t think we could look after Dylan after all, given the circumstances. Mrs Carrington told Mum that I shouldn’t have let my hamster run wild in the back garden and Dylan probably thought he was a rat. They didn’t talk much after that.

  On the side of the packet it says “Every cat’s a LolCat when it eats these tasty treats. Shake the packet and watch your cat come running!” I only hope that they’re tasty enough to tempt Dylan to follow my trail.

  Back up in my bedroom I check that everything is in the right place. I move the cardboard box so that it’s facing the door – still on its side so that Dylan can easily climb inside. At the back of the box my mum’s laptop is still hooked up to the Geiger counter, the banana propped in front of it. Everything is ready – except me.

  Now, obviously I’m not going to try to catch Dylan the psycho-cat without some kind of protection. When Snake Mason captured the man-eating tigers of the Sundarbans he wore a camouflaged Kevlar bodysuit and a helmet with a face painted on the back because tigers usually attack you from behind. I have to make do with a pair of gardening gloves, my old BMX body armour that is now two sizes too small and a Scary Clown Halloween mask worn back to front. I look ridiculous, but if it keeps me safe from Dylan’s claws I don’t care.

  With the packet of LolCat TreatzTM in my gloved hand, I step out into the back garden. I’m ready to start laying my trail.

  Little bubbles of excitement are fizzing inside my stomach and I can’t stop a tiny burp from slipping out. If this works then I’m one step closer to finding my mum.

  I decide to put the first treat at the bottom of the garden path. This is
right next to the shed, or what my dad likes to call his workshop, although he never goes in there now as he spends all his time working down in the Deep Mine Lab. This is one of the places where Dylan likes to hide in the flower beds – jumping out to ambush any birds that make the mistake of landing in our garden.

  This time, though, there’s no sign of Dylan lurking in the undergrowth and the only sound I can hear is a bee buzzing over the rose bushes. Now, Snake Mason says that the most dangerous sound you’ll ever hear in the jungle is silence. This is the sign that a big predator is on the prowl and all the other animals have scarpered sharpish. So when even the bee stops buzzing, some sixth sense for danger makes me turn around to see Dylan crouching in front of the shed, ready to pounce.

  As I slowly back away, Dylan eyes the first of the LolCat TreatzTM that I’ve dropped on to the path. To me these look more like something a cat leaves behind than something they’d want to eat, but Dylan must think differently as he arches his back and pounces on the treat. One second it’s there and the next it’s gone.

  Licking his lips, Dylan turns his attention back to me. He seems to have a fresh swagger in his prowl as he steps towards me. Beneath my BMX body armour I can feel my heart thudding in my chest.

  “Nice kitty,” I say, slowly backing away. I shake another LolCat treat into the palm of my gardening glove. A single LolCat treat weighs three grams and this packet of LolCat TreatzTM says it contains 60 grams of treats. This means I’ve got nineteen left. I’ve measured the distance from the cardboard box in my bedroom to Dad’s shed and it’s 30 metres. This means I can give Dylan one LolCat treat every one and a half metres.

  Down the garden path, through the kitchen, up the stairs past the sound of Grandad Joe’s snores, I carefully shake out the tasty chicken treats, Dylan snaffling up each one with a snap of his jaws. The packet in my hand is getting lighter with every step that I take, and as Dylan slinks up the final step to my bedroom I only hope I’ve got enough left to get him inside the box.

  Inside the cardboard box I can see the glow of the laptop screen, the blur of flashing zeroes and ones lighting up the Geiger counter. No sound of any clicking yet to tell me the banana is going radioactive. I tip the last of the LolCat TreatzTM into my hand. There are only two left.

  Dylan stops dead in his tracks, his hackles rising as the door swings shut behind his tail.

  I’m now trapped in my bedroom with a psychopathic cat.

  Opening my trembling hand I show Dylan the last of the LolCat TreatzTM, then with a flick of my wrist I throw them into the open cardboard box.

  Dylan doesn’t need to be asked twice. With a flash of fur he springs forward into the box. Quickly I push the cardboard flaps shut behind him, pressing my weight against the lid as I prepare myself for the inevitable feline explosion when Dylan discovers that he’s trapped.

  From inside the box I hear the faint clicking of the Geiger counter followed by a puzzled miaow. Then this miaow is suddenly cut off into silence like a cat being pushed out of a spaceship airlock.

  I wait for a moment, trying to work out if Dylan has just got a frog (or a hamster) in his throat. Maybe he’s playing dead to try and fool me into opening the box. But as the seconds tick on, I can’t hear a single sound from inside. Not even the faint click of the Geiger counter.

  Tensing myself, I slowly open the cardboard flaps, ready for Dylan to spring out, claws first. But as I look inside the box, all I can see is the laptop, the banana and the Geiger counter. There is no cat. Dylan has disappeared.

  My brain tries to work out exactly what this means. When Schrödinger put his cat in a box with a lump of radioactive uranium and a bottle of poison, he knew that Tiddles was going to end up either dead or alive – or maybe even both at the same time. But unless Dylan’s been vaporised by a radioactive banana there’s only one explanation for what’s happened here. The Quantum Banana Theory works and Dylan is now in a parallel universe.

  I stare into the box, the zeroes and ones still scrolling across the laptop screen. My head’s buzzing with excitement. This isn’t a box any more – this is a door to another dimension. And on the other side of that door, my mum could be waiting for me.

  There’s no time to waste. It’s time to try the experiment again – this time with me as the subject. Climbing inside the box, I pull my knees up to my chest to fit inside. It’s a tight squeeze but I just about manage it. Reaching forward I pull the flaps of the box closed behind me. All I’ve got to do now is wait for the banana to spit out a radioactive gamma ray and then the universe will split into two.

  My stomach makes a groaning noise like the TARDIS taking off. It must be nerves or maybe I shouldn’t have skipped lunch. In the light from the laptop screen I can see the banana resting against the digital Geiger counter, and although my stomach’s still rumbling I don’t think it would be a good idea to eat part of the experiment.

  I feel like an astronaut sitting in a rocket as the countdown reaches zero. Adrenalin is racing round inside me and it’s all I can do to keep myself sitting still.

  Downstairs Grandad Joe is probably still asleep in front of Back to the Future while Dad is in his underground lab pretending that everything’s OK by trying to solve the mysteries of the universe. Me? I’m actually doing it. I’m going to find Mum again.

  That’s when I hear the clicking noise – the telltale sound of the Geiger counter that means a radioactive particle in the banana has just decayed. I tense myself waiting for the universe to split into two. I’ve watched a load of science-fiction films so I’m expecting the box to start shaking itself to bits with flashing lights and some seriously impressive special effects, but all I get is a beep from my mum’s laptop and then the clicking stops.

  Is that it?

  Nervously I push open the lid of the box and peer outside. I can see my telescope still pointing up out of the skylight window, piles of books, comics and cardboard boxes cluttering up the floor. With a sinking feeling I climb out of the box.

  Nothing has changed. There’s my desk and swivel chair, the map of the solar system still stuck up above my bed. It hasn’t worked.

  I can feel my eyes starting to leak. Dad was wrong. Quantum physics is a load of rubbish. Parallel universes don’t exist. You only get one world. You only get one mum. And I’m never going to get to see mine again.

  Angrily, I rub my eyes and that’s when I notice that something’s not quite right.

  On the poster of the solar system above my bed there should be eight planets lined up from left to right: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. But this poster seems to show nine instead.

  I shake my head, thinking I must have rubbed my eyes too hard, but when I look again there’s still a brand-new planet between Jupiter and Mars.

  I stare at the poster in disbelief, trying to make sense of it. Instead of the asteroid belt there’s a bright-purple planet hanging in space where no planet should be. The caption on the poster gives me its name. Ceres.

  When I realise what this means, I can’t stop myself from smiling. Dad’s book said that in a parallel universe there might just be one tiny change. Well, I reckon a brand-new planet in the solar system must count as a pretty big one. The Quantum Banana Theory really works. I must be in a parallel universe.

  “What the—”

  The sound of my own voice makes me spin round. Standing in front of me I see – well, me. The same face, the same hair, the same school uniform. It’s like looking into a mirror except this Albie isn’t wearing BMX body armour, gardening gloves and a Scary Clown Halloween mask worn back to front.

  I open my mouth to start to explain exactly who I am, how I’ve travelled from a parallel universe and how everything’s going to be OK now.

  And that’s when this other Albie punches me in the face.

  Sir Isaac Newton invented gravity. Well, he didn’t invent it but he definitely discovered it. One minute he was sitting under a tree minding his own business and the next min
ute an apple falls down out of the tree and clonks him on the head. Most normal people would just think “Ouch!” or “Why did I decide to sit under this flipping tree?” But Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist and instead he wondered why apples always fall down and not up.

  Newton worked out that gravity was the reason why, and came up with his three Laws of Motion to describe how things move scientifically. Newton’s Third Law of Motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So when this alternative-universe Albie hits me in the face, I end up hitting the floor.

  Now, it’s not like he knocks me out with a single punch, but when I step back in surprise at being hit in the face I trip over a pile of comic books, bang my head on the edge of the desk and knock myself spark out.

  When I open my eyes again I discover I’ve been gaffer-taped to a swivel chair by my evil twin from a parallel universe who’s now leaning over me holding a compass set. And from the expression on his face it doesn’t look as though he is planning to use it in a very mathematical way.

  “What are you doing in my bedroom?” he says, menacingly jabbing the compass in my direction.

  I try to explain how I’ve used a quantum computer, a Geiger counter and a banana to travel from another universe inside a cardboard box. How I’m searching for my mum and to make everything right again. I even want to ask if he’s seen my next-door neighbour’s cat, but with the gaffer tape over my mouth this all comes out more like “mff-SMURGLE-FLURGLE-GURGLE-mff!”

  As well as my mouth, my arms and legs are wrapped in gaffer tape too, pinning me to the chair. I try and pull myself free, but this just spins the chair around and I end up tipping myself sideways.