Ananda Mukherjee was, by all accounts, a contented man. At forty-two, he was a respected physics professor at a reputable college in Kolkata. He loved teaching—the thrill of breaking down complex theories into sparks of wonder for his students never grew old. At home, his world was quieter but fuller: his wife, Sreya, an English teacher at a nearby school, and their nine-year-old son, Rohan, whose endless questions kept Ananda both exhausted and delighted in equal measure.
Life was comfortable, routine. Morning classes, late afternoons filled with research papers and student queries, and evenings at home with family. And yet, there was one part of his life that broke the monotony, one friendship that rekindled his own boyish fascination with science—his bond with Anirban.
Anirban was his colleague, his confidant, and in many ways, his second self. Unmarried, orphaned young, he lived alone in a crumbling two-storeyed house left behind by his grandfather. While most saw loneliness in his life, Ananda saw a rare kind of freedom: Anirban could devote himself entirely to his passions. Together, they had converted one of the ground-floor rooms of that house into a makeshift laboratory.
It wasn’t much—second-hand oscilloscopes, scavenged coils and capacitors, a couple of work benches littered with soldering irons and wires that never seemed to stay coiled. But to them, it was a sanctum. Time dissolved there. Hours bled into nights as they argued, calculated, tinkered, failed, tried again.
Sreya often complained about these late nights. “Physics isn’t your only family, Ananda,” she would remind him sharply over the phone when he lost track of time. Ananda would laugh, promise to return soon, and then whisper conspiratorially to Anirban, “She’s right, of course—but just five more minutes.” Five minutes always turned into an hour.
For the last few months, their obsession had been a single, audacious project: building a miniaturised particle accelerator that could run on household power. It was ambitious, bordering on foolish. But slowly, through a hundred failed circuits and painstaking recalibrations, they had come tantalisingly close.
On the evening of August 12th, as the grandfather clock in Anirban’s hall struck ten, the two men stood over their half-finished prototype—an ungainly ring of copper coils and magnets wired together with meticulous care.
Ananda sighed, glancing at the time. “Late again. Sreya will skin me alive.”
Anirban chuckled, his eyes still on the machine. “And rightly so. You’ve been chasing atoms instead of people.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Ananda said, grabbing his bag. “Tomorrow, we finish it. Maybe even test it.”
Anirban’s grin widened. “Yes. Tomorrow, my friend. And who knows—maybe tomorrow we change everything.”
The next day, after classes, they wasted no time. By four in the afternoon, they were already at work in the lab, the smell of solder and coffee thick in the room. Outside, the August sky had grown heavy, swollen clouds threatening rain.
“Pass me the coupling ring,” Anirban said, hunched over the device, eyes glinting behind his glasses.
Ananda handed it over carefully. “You’re shaking. Don’t drop it now.”
“I’m not shaking,” Anirban protested, though the excitement in his voice betrayed him. “Do you realise what we’re about to do? A particle accelerator, in this room. Who’d believe it?”
Ananda smiled faintly. “If it works.”
The storm broke around six. Rain battered the windows, thunder rattled the glass panes, and the old house creaked under each gust of wind. Inside, however, their focus narrowed to the humming framework before them: coils wound tight, metal chambers connected by improvised tubing, circuits patched with solder and tape.
“Done,” Anirban whispered at last. “It’s ready.”
They stood back. The room was dim except for the yellow glow of a single bulb, which flickered with the storm. Their contraption sat like a strange beast, silent but waiting.
“Coffee to celebrate?” Anirban asked, reaching for the kettle.
Ananda checked his watch. “It’s already quarter to seven. No time. We’ll start it now—then I must leave. I promised them.”
Anirban clapped him on the shoulder. “Fair enough. Let’s make history, then.”
They connected the wires to the mains. The storm seemed to fall silent in that moment, as though the world was holding its breath.
“Ready, professor?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
The switch clicked.
A burst of searing light filled the room, so bright it painted the insides of their eyelids. The bulb exploded with a pop, plunging everything into blackness. For a heartbeat, neither man moved.
Then—
BOOM.
A thunderclap shook the house, so close it made the walls tremble. The floor vibrated beneath their feet.
Ananda staggered, clutching his ears. His vision swam with afterimages of the flash. The smell of ozone filled the air, sharp and metallic.
Anirban’s phone torch cut through the dark. Their device sat still, a faint glow radiating from its surface, heat shimmering in the air around it.
“It’s… hot,” Anirban muttered. “It absorbed something. That lightning… it must have channelled straight into the circuit.”
He disappeared upstairs to check the fuses. Ananda slumped into a chair, still dazed, listening to the storm’s roar. His pulse thundered in his ears.
After a few minutes, Anirban returned, relief in his voice. “The fuses are gone, but the house is intact. We were lucky.”
Ananda glanced at his watch. “Seven o’clock. I have to go.” He stood, shaky but resolute. “We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.”
Anirban gave a tired smile. “Go on, old chap. Don’t miss the cake. I’ll guard our monster.”
Ananda hurried out into the wet streets, rain slapping against his face. Behind him, the old house loomed in darkness, silent but for the storm.
The rain had softened to a drizzle by the time Ananda reached his neighbourhood. His wipers squeaked across the windshield, pushing aside the streaks of water. He rehearsed his apology in his head, half-expecting to see Sreya’s stern face waiting at the door, arms folded, Rohan bouncing impatiently behind her.
But as he pulled into the lane, a chill spread through him.
The house was dark. No sound of laughter. No glow of lights. Only rain dripping from the eaves, steady and cold.
He stepped out quickly, splashing into puddles. The front door loomed ahead—and his breath caught.
A padlock hung across the latch. Large. Rusted. From the outside.
“What is this…” His voice cracked, barely audible in the drizzle. He rattled the lock. Solid. Cold. Impossible.
He spun around, heart pounding, scanning for neighbours. The Banerjees across the street—yes, they would know. He stumbled to their door and pressed the bell.
After a moment, the door creaked open. Mr. Banerjee appeared, thinner than Ananda remembered, eyes cautious behind his spectacles.
“Sir, forgive me for disturbing you,” Ananda began, breathless. “My wife—my son—are they here? I found the house locked—”
Mr. Banerjee tilted his head. His brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry, young man. Do I know you?”
Ananda let out a shaky laugh. “What do you mean? Of course you do! We’ve been neighbours for ten years. Just last week, we had dinner together at your place—”
The older man’s expression hardened. “That’s impossible. My wife died five years ago. I moved in here only three years ago, with my daughter and her husband. I don’t know who you are.”
The words hit harder than thunder.
Ananda stammered. “But… you’ve lived here for twenty years. Your son works in Spain. You’ve told me the story a hundred times!”
Mr. Banerjee’s face grew exasperated. “I never had a son—only a daughter. And as for that house across the street—” he pointed— “it’s been empty since I arrived. Locked up, disputed property. No one has lived there for years. Look at the walls. You can see the decay.”
Ananda turned. And froze.
The house—his house—looked alien. The paint peeled in long strips. Cracks veined the plaster. Chunks of brick had fallen away, weeds clawing through the gaps. The windows were boarded, and the gate rusted shut. No warmth. No life.
His legs gave way. He slumped to the wet ground, clutching his head. “No… no… this isn’t real. It can’t be real…”
Mr. Banerjee’s voice softened slightly. “You seem unwell. Come inside, have some water.”
From within, a young woman’s voice called, “Baba, what happened? Who’s there?”
“My daughter,” Mr. Banerjee said gently. “She lives here with me. Please, young man, let us help you.”
But Ananda was already staggering to his feet. His mind whirled, spinning through every theory he had ever taught. Quantum fluctuations. Parallel worlds. Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation.
Lightning. The machine. The sudden burst of energy.
We shifted. The experiment pushed us through.
His chest tightened. If it were true—if they had crossed over—then Anirban would understand. Anirban would know what to do.
Without another word, he stumbled back to his car, soaked and shaking, one desperate thought burning in his skull: Find Anirban.
The rain had thinned to a mist by the time Ananda reached Anirban’s neighbourhood. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, breath shallow. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to hurry. Anirban will know. He has to know. Together, we can fix this…
He turned into the narrow lane, headlights cutting through the haze. He knew every bend, every pothole, every sagging lamppost. He had driven this route dozens of times. He could almost picture the two-storeyed house ahead, its faded blue walls, the terrace where they had once shared countless cups of tea.
But as the car rolled forward, his heart lurched.
The house was gone.
Where it should have stood—grand but worn, proud but fragile—there was only emptiness. A patch of land fenced with corrugated tin sheets, piled with debris. Weeds rose where the front steps once stood. A faded signboard leaned precariously: “Promoter Property — Four-Storey Apartments Coming Soon.”
Ananda slammed the brakes, the car jerking to a halt. His breath caught in his throat.
“No… no, this is wrong…” he whispered. He stumbled out into the mud, rain soaking his shirt in seconds.
He pressed his hands against the fence, peering through the gaps. Bricks. Rubble. A rusted shovel half-buried in the dirt. Nothing else. No lab. No prototype. No Anirban.
His voice cracked as he shouted into the mist.
“Anirban! Anirban, are you there? Answer me!”
Only silence. The rain fell steadily, pattering against the tin sheets. A stray dog barked in the distance.
Ananda’s knees buckled. He clutched the fence, forehead pressed against the cold metal. Had Anirban ever lived here at all, in this version of reality? Had their years of friendship, their late-night experiments, their laughter—all of it—been erased?
A single horrifying thought clawed at him:
What if, in this world, Anirban never existed?
The drizzle seeped into his bones. His body trembled—not just from the cold, but from the crushing weight of loneliness. In this reality, no wife was waiting, no son celebrating, no neighbour who remembered him, no friend who shared his passion.
Only himself.
Adrift.
Not quite there.
Ananda staggered back to his car, eyes vacant, mind spinning with quantum equations and unbearable questions. If there were infinite worlds, infinite Anandas, infinite choices—why had he landed here, in the one where everything that mattered was gone?
He sank into the driver’s seat, rain drumming against the roof like a ticking clock. His hands hung limp on the wheel. For the first time in years, Ananda had no theory, no answer. Only silence.
And the emptiness of a world where he did not belong.
