Parallelities
Alan Dean Foster
 Max is sent to interview a rich man, Barrington Boles, who claims to have invented a machine that can break through the barrier between parallel worlds, or "paras." Max first assumes the man is a typical loony, but after returning home, he finds his apartment burglarized by identical triplets who don't seem to know one another. Later, he meets four "sisters" who look almost but not quite identical, and who claim never to have met before the previous night. Mystified, he rushes back to Boles's place to ask the inventor what on earth is going on. Boles informs him that the machine must have turned Max into a nexus who pulls the inhabitants of other worlds into his own. Max is frantic, but Boles reassures him that the effect will probably wear off in a few days, and that if it doesn't, he should come back on Tuesday. Max tries to resume his life, but his neighbor's canary turns into a hundred identical birds, and the next day Max runs into a double of himself at work. The double (whom he calls "Mitch" to avoid confusion) has no idea what's going on, apparently coming from a para where Max never interviewed Boles. After Max explains the situation to him, they decide to pose as twins. They go to a zoo to work on a story about a painting elephant, only to find the zoo overrun by fifty female chimps. Sensing that the situation has gotten out of hand, Max and Mitch decide to visit Boles again. But on the way, they spot a herd of bighorn sheep and a condor, species extinct in Los Angeles. Max realizes that he's no longer simply pulling things from other worlds into his own, but drifting into other worlds (apparently taking Mitch with him). When they arrive at Boles's mansion, this version of Boles doesn't remember their second meeting and has no idea how to help them. On their way home, Max and Mitch encounter two identical pairs of English-speaking aliens who don't understand why the local spaceport has vanished. Later, Max gets briefly separated from Mitch, and when he returns, Mitch has been replaced by a female version of Max who is an actress rather than a reporter. After he successfully convinces her what has happened, the two go home and make love, realizing that they're the only two people who know exactly how to satisfy each other. In this para, Australia has become the dominant power in the world due to discovering a cheap form of electricity. After falling asleep on a couch at her workplace, he wakes up in his own workplace, where a familiar coworker invites him to a basketball game on the weekend. He assumes that the effect has finally worn off and that he has returned to his original world, until he discovers that the entire world has been taken over by Elder Gods (of H. P. Lovecraft fame), who demand weekly human sacrifices. Somehow, earth's populace has adapted to this reality so completely that everyone continues to live relatively "normal" lives that include tabloid newspapers and professional basketball. After fleeing his building and entering a subway station, he shifts to a new para where the entire world has been destroyed, and he meets a sickly version of himself who informs him that this was the result of the "Boles Effect." Max next finds himself in a utopian, futuristic version of Los Angeles with hovercars, courteous citizens, and no pollution. While he would love to remain there, he has no control over the Boles Effect, and soon he finds himself back in a more familiar version of L.A. He goes home, but when he wakes up the next day he discovers that he's a ghost, because the local Max died in a shooting. He wanders out onto the beach, converses with an old man ghost, and soon encounters two identical couples who have just died—implying that the Boles Effect works even on the dead. After shifting to a para where he's alive once again, Max is at the end of his ropes, bewildered by the metaphysical truths he has learned, disillusioned by the Boles Effect that never seems to end. After contemplating suicide, he finally goes home and sleeps again. During the night, he has a series of bizarre dreams in quick succession, and he concludes that he must have been "para dreaming," implying that "not only was the cosmos composed of para realities, it was rife with para unrealities as well." When he drives to work, he discovers that he's entered a para where every man, woman, and child in the world is a version of himself. Everyone not only looks like him, but has aspects of his personality too, and for the first time in his life he becomes aware of how unpleasant a person he is. His boss assigns him to interview a man named Max Parker, who lives in what Max thinks is his own apartment. This local Max claims to be experiencing dreams where a man named Barrington Boles has zapped him with a condition that makes him sail through parallel worlds. Max doesn't recognize the name of the newspaper that this Max works for, The National Enquirer. Max has had enough. He concludes that so many parallel worlds must exist that "a single universe [is] but a pinprick." After having met so many clones of himself, his whole sense of individual identity is coming apart. His mind can't take it anymore. He drives to Boles's house, witnessing some bizarre sights on the way, but hoping against hope that by the time he arrives he will have found a version of Boles who can end Max's condition. This Boles remembers their second meeting and works the machine on Max once again, attempting to destroy the effect. After all that he's been through, Max will not allow himself to believe that everything is back to normal. But as he leaves Boles's mansion and returns home to his apartment, he grows more and more relaxed—until the reflection in his mirror frowns at him while he's still smiling.