"Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch Trivia Quiz

Answer: Chicago

Jason Dessen and his wife Daniela and son Charlie live a happy life in Chicago. Before they found out that Daniela was pregnant, they both had dreams to make it big in their chosen fields, but gave up on those lofty dreams in order to focus on family.

They are happy together if not a little unfilled professionally. As the book begins, they are enjoying Thursday night family night in their brownstone in Logan Square, Chicago on a beautiful October evening.

Answer: Walking home from the store

Jason goes out to meet up with an old friend named Ryan who is having a celebratory party for a prize he won for his research in neuroscience. Jason meets up with Ryan, has a drink, and is walking home after picking up ice cream for the family. He is enjoying the cool fall air when he hears footsteps behind him and is abducted by a masked assailant with a gun.

He is taken to a dilapidated old building where he is told to change his clothes before being drugged.

Answer: College professor

Jason is a college professor, teaching undergrads introductory Quantum Mechanics. Before leaving the lab and research behind, he was studying Quantum Mechanics and the possibility of multiverses and was considered a genius in the field. Both his old friend Ryan and wife Daniela believe that Jason was a leading researcher in his field and is completely underemployed and underutilized in the job he ended up in after he got married.

When Jason is abducted, he is drugged and when he wakes up, he is surrounded by people he doesn't know who are applauding him for "succeeding." Jason is confused about where he is and who all the people are. It turns out, he wakes up to a life where he did not marry Daniela or have a son and he succeeded in his research - creating a way to travel between different realms in a multiverse. He has created a way for people to travel to different possibilities through a device that he has been testing for a number of years. Two other test subjects entered the device before him and were never seen again. He allegedly entered the device a number of months ago and was considered missing until now, when he stumbled out of it and collapsed.

Answer: Art

Daniela is a talented artist who gave up creating art after she had her son Charlie and suffered a difficult bout of post-partum depression. She currently teaches art to young students. When Jason wakes up after he is abducted, he is confused and misses both Daniela and Charlie.

In the realm he wakes up in, Charlie was never born and he never married Daniela. He tracks her down and discovers she is a talented and famous artist who he once had a fling with but did not pursue a relationship with.

Answer: Amanda

When Jason wakes up after his abduction, he is followed around by security and unable to move around freely. Although he is the one who supposedly carried out the research and is admired by the team working with him, he is under constant scrutiny that he is told is for his own good.

He manages to escape, finds the woman named Daniela, also finds his old friend Ryan, and tell them about what's happening to him and how confused he is. The people at the lab where this top-secret research is taking place are not happy at all about him divulging this information and they track him down, kill Ryan and Daniela, and threaten to kill him. One of the team at the lab, Amanda, helps him to escape.

In order to get out of the locked down lab, they actually venture back into the device where Jason was found after his abduction.

They don't know if they will live, die, or simply get stuck in a contraption they have no idea how to control.

Answer: Jason2

It turns out that in this other realm there is another version of Jason, who is called Jason2. Jason2 focuses completely on his research and does not end up getting married or having a child. His life is his work and he is incredibly successful but missing something - family.

He uses the device he's created to find the realm where our Jason is happily married and decides to drug him and swap out their lives. Jason2 takes on the role of happy husband and doting father. Both Daniela and Charlie notice that their husband and dad is a little "off", but only in small and almost unnoticeable ways. If anything, he is more attentive, more loving and more interested in them than he ever has been before.

Answer: Cube

The device that Jason2 created is a cube. When Jason sees it, he is amazed that it actually exists. The cube that Jason was working on was a small object, not a cube large enough or ambitious enough to actually hold people. Once in the cube, the subject takes a drug that enables this type of realm-to-realm travel and a series of doors appear in a hallway.

The subject opens a door and is able to enter a different world. Jason uses the device to find his way back to his own life but has considerable difficulties as there are seemingly infinite possibilities and outcomes.

There are more dark and frightening worlds than there are versions of peaceful or happy worlds, and Jason goes on a terrifying journey to get back to his wife and son. He disturbs the other worlds when he enters them and the versions of Jason in those worlds catch on to what he is doing and what he is looking for.

Answer: No

There are surprisingly many versions of Jason that want what he has and will do anything to get it. He is followed and tracked as he makes his way through the various worlds and many of the other Jasons will harm him and each other in order to be with Daniela and Charlie. I personally found this part of the plot interesting but a little difficult to accept. I can get behind all the other science-fiction elements of this novel but not the fact that there may be other nefarious versions of a good man out in other worlds.

Answer: The police station

Jason ends up back at his own world but is on the run from other versions of himself. He is scared to reach out to Daniela and Charlie because he knows he is being tracked and watched and doesn't want them to be harmed. He figures the best thing to do is to get arrested and make a phone call from jail where he is surrounded by law enforcement and is conceivably safe.

He also chooses a phone call from jail because he is afraid to use any kind of cellular device to contact Daniela. He tells her the wild story that her husband is now an imposter and convinces her with a recent memory that Jason2 couldn't possibly know about.

This works and she comes to the jail to hear him out.

Answer: They take their chances with realm to realm travel

Jason is able to convince Daniela and Charlie about everything that has happened and they go on the run together. They are followed by evil Jasons and decide that their only hope to escape is to get back to the device that enables the inter-world travel but to have their son Charlie choose the door to the new world. Charlie is the only one of them that has no connection to any of the other Jasons and they believe there will be no way for the Jasons to follow them.

The book ends with Charlie's hand on a door to a new world....