Page 140 - The Midnight Library

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It felt so ludicrous, in the heart of a scientific facility, to be talking like

this.
‘ ey are,’ Hugo gestured, as if tr ying to pluck the right term from the air,
‘an interpretation.’
‘Interpretation?’

‘I have met others like us,’ Hugo said. ‘You see, I have been in the in-
between state for a long time. I have encountered a few other sliders. at’s
what I call them. Us. We are sliders. We have a root life in which we are lying
somewhere, unconscious, suspended bet ween life and death, and then we

arrive in a place. And it is always somet hing different. A librar y, a video
store, an art galler y, a casino, a restaurant . . . What does that tell you?’
Nora shrugged. And thought. Listening to the hum of the central heating.
‘ at it’s all bullshit? at none of this is real?’

‘No. Because the template is always the same. For instance: there is always
someone else there – a guide. Only ever one person. ey are always
someone who has helped the person at a significant time in their life. e
setting is always somewhere with emotional significance. And there is

usually talk of root lives or branches.’
Nora thought about being consoled by Mrs Elm when her dad died.
Staying with her, comforting her. It was probably the most kindness anyone
had ever shown her.

‘And there is always an infinite range of choices,’ Hugo went on. ‘An
infinite number of video tapes, or books, or paintings, or meals . . . Now, I
am a scientist. And I have lived many scientific lives. In my original root life,
I have a degree in Biolog y. I have also, in another life, been a Nobel Prize-

winning chemist. I have been a marine biologist tr ying to protect the Great
Barrier Reef. But my weakness was always physics. At first I had no idea of
how to find out what was happening to me. Until I met a woman in one life
who was going through what we are going through, and in her root life she

was a quantum physicist. Professor Dominique Bisset at Montpellier
University. She explained it all to me. e many-worlds interpretation of
quantum physics. So that means we—’
A kind-faced, pink-skinned, auburn-bearded man whose name Nora

didn’t know came into the kitchen to rinse a coffee cup, then smiled at them.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, in a so American (maybe Canadian) accent,
before padding away in his slippers.