Paul Melko's "The Walls of the Universe": Bollywood-style double-role story

You know the plot - two complete look-a-likes - one good, one bad. Bad cons good & effectively steals his life. Good eventually strikes back & wins.

In spite of very stale plot, it's quite an engaging adventure story. And to make the plot a little different, look-a-likes are the same individual, but coming from different parallel universes! And the good doesn't quite win.

Full story text is available online.

Story summary.

John Rayburn is a 15 year old boy living on a farm somewhere in the US with his parents. One fine day, he meets a stranger who is actually his own version from a parallel universe! Since they look alike & have the same names, the visitor dubs the local one as Farmboy & himself as John Subprime.

After some initial hesitation, they become sort of friends - at least from Farmboy's point-of-view. Stranger convinces him to try his device for travelling to a parallel universe while he will pass off as Farmboy for his few hours of absence; the adventure is to last 12 hours - the time it takes to charge the device's battery. We are not told how the battery is charged.

Now, the device displays numbers - 1, 2, 3, ... These are identification numbers of parallel universes. You set it to target with a dial, & pull a lever.

So the Farmboy makes the journey from his universe number 7533 to the one numbered 7534. Only, when the time is up, he finds he cannot return! Some experiments later he finds that device can only take you to next parallel universe (higher number), not the previous one!

Rest is the story of his frustrating adventures through various universes - all a little different from each other.

See also.

1. There are more than one incidents in this story where travel across universes results in the traveler occupying space already occupied by something else - like a road! First discussion of this possibility I'm aware of is in the second story in H G Wells' novel "The Time Machine". But there you travel across time on the same earth, rather than to a parallel earth.
   

Fact sheet.

The Walls of the Universe, short story, review
First published: Asimov's April/May 2006
Rating: A
Nominated for Hugo Awards 2007 in novella category

Related: All Hugo Award stories.