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from high above, as it completed the two month voyage back home. But when it reached pseudo-Boston, we saw that the ship was battered and broken by sea storms; it barely limped into the harbor, and when we dove closer, we saw that half the crew was missing. And those that were left were diseased with a pox-like covering on their skin.
    Disease.
    I switched to the Bournemouth spyeye and was shocked to see the black smoke of funeral pyres clouding the sky. Plague.
    “If we nuke pseudo-Boston, we can stop the spread,” Dr. Elk said. “We can contain it.”
    Kyle and I shared a look.
    “Dr. Elk, that’s impossible,” I said.
    “I have enough money to send a bomb through.”
    “We can’t nuke a city,” I said. “Even one in another universe.”
    “We can’t let them destroy this world!” he cried.
    Kyle picked up the phone, and dialed a number. “We’ve got a problem with the Maize-2 universe,” he said.
    Dr. Elk ripped the phone from his hand and threw it against the wall.
    I said to Kyle, “Move us ahead one year.”
    “No!” cried Dr. Elk. “We can cauterize the infection.”
    “You’ve caused the infection!” I said.
    Kyle opened a new hole, and when the spyeyes went through, we saw that the entire world was filled with empty cities and ghost towns, both hemispheres devoid of civilization, and left with just a few scattered pockets of survivors.
    The crowd diseases of America had been too much for Europe to handle, and vice versa . They had wiped each other out with their germs on first contact.
    We had been party to 200 million deaths.
    I stood, queasy, and left the lab, unable to look Dr. Elk in the eye. Unable to do anything but walk.
    The sister who answered the door at the sorority house was cool.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m looking for Beth Ringslaught.”
    The student frowned. “She’s not here.”
    “Where is she?”
    “At the hospital.”
    “Which hospital?”
    “St. Anne’s.”
    I took a taxi and found her in the isolation ward. They wouldn’t let me in, but finally told me her status. The palsy had started months ago, but now the disease had reached her brain, and she had lost motor control of her body. She was unlikely to leave the hospital again.
    “I’d like to see her,” I said.
    “Who are you, just a boyfriend?” the nurse asked, clearly wondering if I was infected too. Maybe I’d infected her.
    “I’m a good friend,” I said.
    “Well, okay. Her family hasn’t been here.”
    She was sleeping, so I sat beside her, took her hand in mine. She looked like she had the day before when we’d talked. But I knew she would start wasting away, that in a month she would be skeletal, her face a grinning rictus as the disease ate at her. I forced the thought from my mind, but it was never far away.
    Her eyes fluttered open, filled with terror.
    “Ryan,” she said, softly.
    “Beth.”
    “Sorry I missed the big day.”
    “It was anything but.” And I told her that we had killed 200 millions of people.
    She turned her head away and the tears fell down her face into her pillow.
    “What did we do?”
    “Nothing good.”
    “I wanted you to continue this work . . . after.” She looked up at me, and I kissed her forehead.
    “I’m sorry.”
    *
    They shut the universe down. Dr. Elk didn’t come back the next year; he disappeared completely, not just from academia, but from all contact with society. Perhaps the magnitude of his deeds penetrated his egotistical side.
    The MWD was shut down for a year, and now there’s legislation in place to govern transfers of material between universes. If we did now what we had done, we’d all be up on manslaughter charges. That’s one good thing that’s happened, advances in the rights of parallel people.
    Beth died six weeks after she entered the hospital. Her family had disowned her. Her sisters didn’t even send flowers. No one wants to have been associated with one of the Infected. Only a decadent lifestyle led to that disease.
    But I was