Free The Journal of Curious Letters (The 13th Reality #1) by James Dashner Page B

with the Barf Scarf. The laughter didn’t faze Tick in the least; in his mind, those people had ceased to exist a long time ago.
    “Well,” Mr. Chu said. “Maybe you’d like to come up to the board and give us a diagram of what you’re thinking about?” Tick knew the man had to give him a hard time every now and then or it would be overwhelmingly obvious that he favored the smart kid with the red-and-black scarf.
    “No, sir,” Tick replied. “Haven’t figured it out yet.”
    “Let me know when you do. And in the meantime, grace me with your attention.”
    Tick nodded and resettled himself in his seat, looking toward the front of the classroom. Someone behind him threw a wad of paper at his head; he ignored it as it ricocheted and fell to the floor. Mr. Chu continued his lecture, but faltered a few minutes later when someone grumbled about how boring science was.
    “Oh, really?” Mr. Chu asked, his tone almost sarcastic. “Don’t you realize all this stuff leads to things that are much, much more fascinating? We need to build a solid foundation so you can have a lot of fun later.”
    He only received blank stares in answer.
    “I mean it! Here’s an example. How many of you have heard of quantum physics?”
    Along with a few others, Tick raised his hand. He’d once watched a really cool show on the Discovery Channel with his dad about the subject. Both of them had agreed afterward that quantum physics must have been something Star Trek fans invented so they’d have another topic to discuss instead of debating the average number of times Mr. Spock visited the toilet every day.
    “Who’d like to take a stab and tell us what it’s about?” Mr. Chu asked.
    Trying to make up for his earlier daydreaming, Tick was the only one who offered. Mr. Chu nodded toward him.
    “It’s about the really, really small stuff—stuff smaller than atoms even—and they have a lot of properties that don’t seem to follow the same rules as normal physics.”
    “Wow, you’re smart, SpongeBob,” someone whispered from the back. He thought it was Billy the Goat, but couldn’t be sure. Tick ignored him.
    “Such as?” Mr. Chu prodded, either not hearing the smart-aleck remark or disregarding it.
    “Well, I don’t remember a whole lot of the show I saw on T.V., but the thing that really seemed cool was they’ve basically proven that something can literally be in two or more places at once.”
    “Very good, Tick, that’s part of it.” Mr. Chu paced back and forth in front of the students, hands clasped behind his back, trying his best to fit the mold of Very Smart Professor. “We can’t get into it very much in this class, but I think many of you will be excited to learn about it as you study more advanced classes in high school. My favorite aspect of the Q.P., as we used to call it in my peer study groups, is the fact they’ve also proven you can affect the location of an object simply by observing it. In other words, how you study it changes the outcome, which means there must be more than one outcome occurring simultaneously. Does that make sense?”
    Tick nodded, fascinated, wishing they could drop the easy stuff and dig deeper into this subject. He didn’t bother to look around the room, knowing that the rest of his classmates would once again return nothing but blank stares.
    “Basically,” Mr. Chu continued, “it means alternate versions of the present could exist at any moment, and that your actions, your observations, your choices can determine which of those you see. In other words, we’re living in one of maybe a million different versions of the universe. Some people call it the multiverse.” He folded his arms and shook his head slightly while staring at the floor, a small smile on his face, as if recalling a fond memory. “Nothing in all my studies has ever fascinated me as much as quantum physics.”
    He paused, looking around the room, and his face drooped into a scowl of disappointment like a