Multiversum by Leonardo Patrignani Read Free Book Online Page B

him hospitality in her home struck him as a remote and unimaginable prospect.
    He had three and a half hours to wait before he could board his second flight. For the first hour, Alex wandered aimlessly through the airport. He stopped in only one shop, where he bought a new pair of headphones for his iPod, then he took a seat in a bar and pulled a book by Andrew Klavan, True Crime , out of his backpack.
    He looked around, every now and then. There was a continuous coming and going of people, either tearfully hugging each other goodbye or rejoicing at seeing each other after all this time.
    They’re all lines : the thought occurred to him, and he started to see each of those people as a line traced on an imaginary map. A giant tangle of paths that intersected, brushed past one another, merged, and then extended into the distance. Out there, on the streets of the world, were billions of lines, billions of interwoven lives. Billions of routes and directions. Turns that were made, unexpected swerves, sometimes journeys suddenly cut off halfway. He thought for a moment that a pair of lovers might not be anything more than two journeys tossed together by fate. They could follow the most ridiculous routes on the globe, go anywhere on Earth, and never meet at all. Or they could cross paths multiple times and never recognise one another. They could catch the same bus every morning and never find out a thing about each other. And so on until the end of their days, without ever interacting. But it could take so little: a short exchange, a passing comment, and the two lines would magically merge. From the grey lines of a solitary journey, they’d become a single path.
    At noon, as scheduled, the Paris–Kuala Lumpur flight took off.
    They were expected to land at 6.35 a.m. local time. On the Malaysia Airlines flight, Alex managed to get a little sleep. When he woke up, it was only two hours to arrival. Even if I’d taken a sleeping pill, I’d never have slept that long , he thought to himself, while a few rows back a baby in its mother’s arms cried and cried.
    This time, he had a pretty long wait before boarding his last flight. He’d have to spend almost an entire day in the Malaysian capital, with fifteen hours between landing there and taking off for Melbourne.
    The sheer size of the airport was what astonished Alex. It took him nearly twenty minutes to get to the exit. He was also impressed by how tidy and clean the place was. Even though tens of thousands of people moved through it every day, there wasn’t a scrap of rubbish on the floor, and the vast windows overlooking the runways were practically invisible: that’s how clean they were.
    With his backpack slung over his shoulder, Alex reached the automatic doors and left the airport. A sudden wave of tropical heat washed over him. The humidity was as unpleasant as it was unexpected.
    He had no idea how to kill the time. He walked out along a wide roadway without much traffic. The first thing he saw was a sign for the Sepang International Circuit, which was practically next door to the airport. He’d seen a number of car races on that track — as a fan of video games, he actually knew its layout pretty well. He’d mastered it over numerous occasions, often at Marco’s, during their PlayStation duels. He decided to head in that direction.
    The racetrack was closed for repairs, but with his basic English, Alex managed to ask a construction worker if he could direct him to a place to eat and relax for a couple of hours. Then he caught a bus that took him to the coast. When he saw the beach appear at the end of the road, he got off the bus. He was at Bagan Lalang Beach, a beautiful stretch of sand that lay between the Sepang district and the Indian Ocean. As he crossed the street, a row of bicycles shot past, passing him on a bike path that ran alongside the roadway. Then he reached a low wall, beyond which extended the magnificent