Strangers and Shadows by John Kowalsky

originally two keys made, one for both of you, but the Stranger, sorry, the agent , who was delivering the keys was ambushed and left for dead by the people who were chasing us.  He nearly didn’t pull through.  Anyway, only Asher’s key made it through.”
    “That’s why the door wouldn’t work for me,” Ava said, finally coming out of her self-pity party.
    “Right again.  You two aren’t as Fourth Verse as you look.”  Dorian didn’t pause to wait for the stare of death that Ava was preparing for him.  “The keys are coded to a specific person’s DNA, and cannot be duplicated or used by anyone else.”
    “How was Ava able to come through then?” Asher asked.
    “Mike, remind me to suggest a debriefing vid to the Council for times like these,” Dorian said, as if Asher had not just asked a question.  “Sorry, where was I?  My head’s always running off with something new.”  He paused, remembering what he was explaining.   “Ah , yes, Ava was able to come through because of something called the Nearness Induction Principle, or the NIP.  The engineers stumbled onto it by accident.  I’ll skip the specifics, but whenever you’re in direct physical contact with the key holder, you may use the door too.  It’s like a piggy back ride.  Technically, as long as the door is open, anyone or anything can go through, the problem, and why you want to be in contact with the key holder, is that as soon as the key holder goes through, the door closes.  Anything caught half - in , half - out, and , well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.”
    Outside the window Asher saw a large city approaching steadily.  “So where exactly are we then, or, when , I guess?” 
    “You guess wrong,” Dorian said.  “You were right with the where question. The city out there is Chicago.  The Chicago of the Third Verse to be more exact.”
    “I remember reading about a Chicago, but what’s the Third Verse?”
    Dorian rolled his eyes briefly.  He really must have his people update the flash device to include an explanation of the Verses.  He was growing tired of playing tour guide to the MultiVerse, but he continued.  “We have discovered several parallel universes to which we can travel physically.  In theory, there are an infinite number of them, but only some of them are stable enough to have allowed life to evolve.  Many of the verses don’t have an earth, or at least not a whole one, anyway.  We discovered six other stable verses before we depleted most of our resources in the searching.  Nothing in life is free, after all.  Long story short, we stopped looking for new verses and focused on the ones we had already discovered.  We brilliantly named them the First Verse, Second Verse, Third and so on.  We neglected to include ourselves however when we began naming the verses, so we added ourselves to the end as the Seventh Verse.”
    “What about our home?  Which universe are we from?”  Ava asked, the spark was returning to her eyes.  
    There’s my girl, Asher thought, wondering where the phrase had come from.  Must have read it somewhere .
    “Why, an excellent question, my dear princess.  You are from the Fourth Verse.  Now, does anyone know what’s missing from the where-are-we question?” Dorian asked.  “Anyone?”
    “ When? ” Asher answered.  “This is all a bit confusing.”
    “Correct!  On both counts.”  Dorian seemed pleased.  After all, it wasn’t everyday that he got to speak with someone from the Fourth.
    “Sooooo?” Ava asked.  “When are we?”
    She’s close to losing it again , Asher thought.
    Dorian paused for dramatic effect.  “The year is 2012.”
    Ava immediately retorted, “But that’s almost twenty-five years before The End War.”
    “Perhaps in the Fourth, but not here in the Third,” Dorian replied.  
    Ava frowned, not following the logic.
    Growing impatient, Dorian explained, “Each verse is on its own time line.  Depending on when each